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Nephele 











Nephele 


By 

Francis William Bourdillon 


New York 

New Amsterdam Book Company 
156 Fifth Avenue 
1896 


Copyright, 1896 
by 

Francis William Bourdillon 


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Introduction 

I AM often asked, like most other people, 
by the less wise of my acquaintance, if I 
“believe in” ghosts ; and when I answer, 
simply and seriously, what is to my mind 
a very serious if not a very simple question, 
by saying “ Yes,” I am met with incredu- 
lity and derision. And I find that it is 
generally regarded as one of the chief 
gains of education and civilization to be 
able to disbelieve in ghosts. 

Now to my mind, on the contrary, it is 
one of the worst evils of our modern cult- 
ure, and the nineteenth century science, 
of which we are so proud, that men are no 
longer able to believe in ghosts, or in the 
Supernatural, as supernatural, at all. For 
it is a simple and unalterable fact, a law 
of nature as constant as any sequence dis- 
covered by the scientists, that as soon as 
5 


Introduction 


men cease to believe in a thing, it ceases 
— not to be — but to reveal itself to them. 

Nowadays we have enthroned Reason, 
and banished Belief. Everything is 
brought to the test of scientific explana- 
tion, that is, of Probability. In fact it has 
come to this, that whereas the larger mind 
of elder days balanced restlessly between 
Possibility and Impossibility, we, on the 
other hand, keep the index within the 
more prudent limits of Probability and 
Improbability. 

In these matters I am thankful to say 
that I belong to the old world. There is 
nothing I distrust more than my own rea- 
son — except other people's ; and nothing 
I more unhesitatingly trust than those 
subtle unreasoning instincts, which flash 
upon the soul as by some sixth sense, clear 
as eyesight, and as unimpeachable. 

These few words of prelude are necessary, 
I think, to introduce the story I am about 
to write. In my own mind this Belief of 
mine — or Credulit}^, if you will: it is a 
better thing than Incredulity — is the ex- 
planation of all that is strange in the tale. 

6 


Introduction 


The things came to me, because I was 
prepared to believe in them. 

To many of my readers they will, I fear, 
throw a different light upon the story. 
The whole, they will say, are but the im- 
aginations of a credulous and superstitious 
nature. Well; there is no medicine fora 
mind once blood-poisoned with scepticism ; 
and in a generation such as this, it is, 
perhaps, as high an honor to be doubted, 
as it is in ages of Faith to be believed. 

ENDYMION GERARD. 


7 





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Nephele 


CHAPTER I 

It was in the year i86— , on a warm, 
bright day of June. I was then a boy of 
between eighteen and nineteen, at a large 
public school, fairly popular with boys and 
masters, fair at work, and fair at play, but 
avoiding the condemnation of being “fair 
all round’' by one excellence — I was more 
than fair, I was good, at music. 

I was born with a great natural taste for 
music, and had fortunately had great ad- 
vantages for its development in living most 
of my life in a <^athedral town. My father 
and mother had both perished in the In- 
dian Mutiny, and I had been left to the 
care of a childless uncle and aunt, my 
uncle being a canon of the cathedral. 

At school I had free permission to use 
9 


Nephele 

the chapel organ whenever I would, and 
indeed I often played the service for the 
organist. On this particular day, which 
was a half-holiday, I had gone into the 
chapel directly after the school dinner, to 
let the great heat of the midsummer sun 
pass, before going to the cricket field. I 
can recall perfectly even now the cool 
delicious hush of the great chapel, as I 
came out of the hot glare of the quad- 
rangle— the tiers of empty seats, a dropped 
book on the matting-covered marble of 
the floor, the flecks of colored light here 
and there on seat and floor, from the 
stained-glass windows, the dulled sounds 
of the crowd of boys outside, separating 
this way and that way from the dining- 
hall. 

I set the hydraulic power to work, 
mounted to the organ loft, pulled out a 
few stops, and laid my fingers on the keys. 
Open in front of me was Mendelssohn’s 
sixth organ concerto, at the andante 
movement ; and I was about to begin to 
play this, when something seemed to turn 
aside my will ; my fingers fell on the notes 

lO 


Nephele^ 

in a rich soft chord, and half uncon- 
sciously, wholly unintentionally, I found 
myself playing a strange unknown air. I 
knew quite certainly that it was something 
I had never heard before, and yet it seemed 
half familiar, as if I might have heard it in 
dreams. Very sweet it was, and plaintive, 
full of human feeling, and with so much 
of the sense of song about it that I could 
almost imagine words were being sung 
to it as I played. 

Once I played it, and again; and to make 
sure that I should not forget it I had begun 
it a third time, when a strange sensation 
came over me. I was conscious that some 
one else was somewhere near me. I 
turned round, as I was playing, to see if 
any one had come up into the organ loft. 
But no, there was only room for one or 
two persons beside the player, and there 
was certainly no one there. I rose and 
went down into the chapel, but it was 
quite empty , and indeed I had turned the 
key in the lock, and no one could have 
come in without knocking at the door for 
me to let him in. Yet I had still a strong 


Nephele* 

impression of some one near me ; whether 
in the body of the chapel or in the organ 
loft, I could not say, but very near me. 

I went up the stairs again; certainly 
there was no one in the winding narrow 
staircase, dark as it was. I could not have 
passed another person. I moved the cur- 
tains; certainly there was no one there. 
And yet I was quite sure there was some 
one close by. I climbed up on to the seat 
and peered in among the organ pipes, in 
the thought that the organ tuner might 
have got into the organ. I called, but no 
answer came ; and in fact it was impossi- 
ble any one could be there without some 
of the pipes being out of place. I was 
completely puzzled, and sat down again to 
play with a strange feeling of constraint, 
as if I was playing before some one, and 
some one I did not know. 

I tried to shake off the impression, and 
determined to play some spirited and un- 
sentimental piece — iht Athalie March — to 
change my current of feeling. But in some 
extraordinary way, I found when I began 

to play that I was not playing what I 
12 


Nephele^ 


meant ; I was again playing the unknown 
beautiful air which had had such a curi- 
ous effect on me. I cannot quite describe 
the feeling I had at the time. I was 
firmly willed to play the March, but 
seemed unable to guide my will, or hold 
it to its own purpose. I felt much as when 
in a dream one tries to carry out some in- 
tention, and finds that one is doing some 
other quite unintended thing. 

However, finding this to be the case, I 
let my will go, my fingers play as they 
would, and my reason no more resist the 
unreasonable sensation, but allow it to 
have its way with me. I at once found 
that I was getting more and more con- 
scious of this presence. I knew there was 
some one close to me — exactly where, I 
could not tell; but near enough to touch, 
had it been tangible. Though no vision, 
real or imagined, rose before my eyes, yet 
my brain seemed to receive as vivid an 
impression as from eyesight, an impression 
sharp, startling, and inspiring as from the 
sudden sight of a very beautiful face. 

And as the impression grew clearer, I 
13 


Nephele" 

became conscious that it was a girl’s pres- 
ence, a girl’s spirit, fulfilled with all the 
graces and sympathies that make the ideal 
of perfect maidenhood. It was these in- 
ward and spiritual attributes that alone 
seemed to influence my sensation, so that 
while I knew more of the temper and char- 
acter of this creature, whoever or what- 
ever she was, than if I had seen her in 
bodily presence, yet of her outward ap- 
pearance I had no feeling. The grosser 
sense of sight seemed dead, and some 
finer, subtler sense to have wakened, to 
receive this keen impression of the unpict- 
ured spirit. 

And as my fingers still played on, I 
found they were now no longer content 
with the simple air, but were beginning to 
entwine it with lovely variations : varia- 
tions that never obscured the original air, 
but seemed to mingle with it, and to be 
the echoes that it woke in all things or 
people that heard it. 

Then I became conscious that this girl- 
presence, whose mysteriousness had at first 

terrified me, was awakening a new sense, 
14 


Nephele' 


not of dread, — that my whole soul was 
being flooded with its sympathies and 
graces, and that the unexplained desire, 
“ the desire of the moth for the star,” that 
we call Love, was quickening within me. 
And with this feeling the music — that I 
myself was playing— grew more tumultu- 
ous, the pure, clear air sounding through 
a passionate surge of harmonies and dis- 
cords, while a wild ecstatic yearning 
thrilled me, that was neither grief nor 
joy, but an unutterable intermingling of 
both 

Where was I ? What was the knock- 
ing? Some one at the chapel door? I 
was still on the organ seat, but with my 
arms laid on the keys, and my head rest- 
ing on them. Some one knocked again, 
and shook the door. I got up, and half- 
dazed made my way down the stairs, and 
opened the door. The sunlight aazzled 
me. 

“ Hullo, Gerard, I thought you must 
have gone, only I heard a sort of droning 
going on as if the organ was playing itself. 

Have you been asleep ? ” 

IS 


Nephele^ 

I had recovered my senses now, and 
remembered that my friend, young Lord 
St. Denys, had promised to come for me 
at four to play cricket. 

“ Is it four o’clock?” I asked. 

“ Yes, struck some time ago. What 
have you being doing ? Did you fall asleep 
over the keys?” 

“ I don’t know. Yes, I think I must 
have.” 

Yes, I think I must have, but when ? 
Before that feeling ? Before that vision ? 
Or after ? 


i6 


Nephele^ 


CHAPTER II. 

I WILL not describe in any detail the next 
few years of my life. Each of them, of 
course, brought its own events and its own 
changes, its own growth of feeling and 
widening of sympathy and deepening of 
knowledge. But these are things which 
can be expressed for others only in their 
results, not in their passing; and there is 
no conspicuous event of any visible sig- 
nificance in my life, till about four years 
had passed since my strange experience 
in the school chapel. 

I had meantime finished my school- 
days, leaving school with a good character 
and a moderate stock of classical learning, 
and had been for some time in a residence 
at one of the smaller colleges at Oxford, 
where I helped in my own maintenance 
by taking the post and salary of organist in 
the college chapel. 


17 


Nephele' 

I need not say that I had often and un- 
weariedly tried to reproduce the air which 
had come to me then with such strange 
and inexplicable sensations. But I had 
never succeeded. Nothing in all the four 
years had brought back one echo of that 
mysterious music, or one reflex of those 
strange sensations. My time of life was 
that in which the mind develops fastest, 
and new phases of thought had succeeded 
each other so fast that my old boyish life 
altogether seemed far behind me, and the 
time in the school chapel seemed most 
dream-like of all. Indeed I had come to 
believe that it had been nothing but a 
dream. 

Meantime I had become possessed — 
like many a young Oxford student— with 
an enthusiasm for Greek art. I had covered 
the walls of my rooms with photographs 
and engravings of the most famous and 
beautiful Greek statues, and looked forward 
to nothing on earth so much as to a visit 
to Italy, and to Greece itself, where these 
wonders were to be seen in their actual 
existent reality. I had always had some 


Nephele^ 

turn for drawing, though my musical talent 
had so much preponderated that other 
tastes had been subordinated to it. But 
now I took to copying vigorously all pict- 
ures and reproductions of Greek statuary 
to which I could get access. At first my 
efforts were poor and unsatisfactory, but 
after a year or so I found myself able to 
copy the features of a statue or engraving, 
or even of a living face, with some fidelity. 

And so it happened that on a certain 
afternoon in early June, when the sun 
shone hot and drowsily into my window, 
I had before me a sheet of drawing paper, 
and began half idly to draw an imaginary 
head— a face after the Greek type, turned 
full towards me. Listlessly I began and 
without much thought, having caught the 
habit of drawing heads in right proportion, 
I drew the outline ; when lo, as I drew, I 
became aware, slowly and yet startlingly, 
that I was copying something or some one. 
How I could be copying with nothing 
visible before me, I could not then or now 
explain ; but I had all the sensations of 

following some exact model, of raising my 
19 


Nephele^ 


eyes from my own drawing to compare it 
with the original, and of taking minute 
pains to get the exact expression and shape 
of the features, processes which were now 
become so familiar to me. 

And then, as the drawing drew near 
completion, and as I was realizing, with an 
almost awe-struck fluttering of the heart, 
that the face which my own hands had 
drawn was that of a more lovely woman 
than I had ever seen, a face absolutely 
perfect in its beauty of line, and in its 
expression of all qualities of goodness and 
nobleness : then of a sudden there came 
to me again the air I had played in the 
school chapel. I dropped my pencil, I 
flew to the piano, set my trembling hands 
to the keys, and played. 

Yes — the same air came up again out of 
the thin sweetness of the wires as out of 
the rich fulness of the organ-pipes. Again 
1 felt the same curious feeling of will- 
lessness, as if I was playing not of my 
own act, nor out of my own mind. And 
again, just as before, there came upon me 

the consciousness of a presence beside me, 
20 


Nephele' 

a presence that I knew certainly to be the 
same girl-spirit I had known before. But 
I could distinguish, in some inexplicable 
way, that the four years that had changed 
me from boy to man, had also changed this 
girl to woman. She was nearer to me than 
if she had stood close beside me. I was 
more conscious of all that she was than if 
I could have seen or touched her. Her 
consciousness and mine seemed to mingle 
for the time in one stream, our sensations 
to move in unison, our natures to infuse 
and pervade each other. For I was aware 
that not only was I influenced by this 
wondrous being, but — oh ecstasy! that I 
had the power to influence her in the 
same way. That just as ’twixt lovers, face 
to face, looks pass and words, by which 
they move each other’s feelings; so be- 
tween us passed the waves of emotion, to 
and fro from one to the other, with no 
need of thought or touch or utterance, 
and without the hindrance born of such 
need. 

I know not how long I continued in this 
trance or vision, my hands playing over 


Nephele' 

and over again the same beautiful air, 
each time with fuller tones and fresh 
variations. I seemed to be growing in 
knowledge of this wonderful creature, and 
in intimacy. I could say of her, She is 
my friend! in more absolute certainty than 
of any of my oldest friends. And in the 
delight of this new friendship, of the alter- 
nate exploring of her spirit and laying 
open to her of mine, which seemed to be 
going on between us, I took no heed of 
time or other circumstance. When sud- 
denly a loud knock at my door, followed 
by the immediate entrance of some one, 
startled me, and I rose almost staggering 
from my seat. 

“ Hullo 1 old man, what’s the matter ? I 
heard you playing the wildest and queer- 
est stuff as I came up— something like 
Wagner-only-much-more-so. You look 
as if you’d been playing in your sleep.” 

The intruder — so at the moment I felt 
him— was, curiously enough, the same 
friend as had broken in upon my former 
dream-music in the school-chapel. Lord 

St. Den3^s. Our friendship had ripened 
22 


Nephele' 

and deepened with our growth, and we 
were now at the same college. 

I remembered that I had engaged to go 
on the river with him at five ; and being 
recovered enough to feel anxious to hide 
from him all I had been feeling, I stretched 
myself, with a yawn. 

“Is it five o’clock? Fve been half 
asleep, I believe, over the piano. I don’t 
wonder you heard some funny music.” 

Alas ! I had forgotten my drawing. I 
heard an exclamation from him, and turn- 
ing to the table, saw he had it in his hand. 

“By Jove! what’s this?” 

“ What’s what ? ” I said. 

“ This face— this head?” 

“ Oh, that’s nothing,” I said, trying to 
speak carelessly, but feeling as conscious 
as a lover, and intensely vexed at his 
having seen it. 

“ But where did you get it from?” he 
persisted. 

“ Oh, I drew it.” 

“ You drew it ! What from ? ” 

“ How do you mean ? ” I asked. “ I 

simply drew it out of my head.” 

23 


Nephele^ 


He stared hard at me, and I suppose I 
showed some of the uncomfortable con- 
sciousness that I was feeling, because he 
said, half laughing but half vexed— 

“That’s all rot, old man]! Excuse my 
saying so. But how did you get hold of 
her photograph ? and how did you find 
out anything about her I ” 

It was now my turn to ask surprised 
questions. 

“Whose photograph? I really don’t 
know what you mean.” 

“ Do you mean to say you didn’t copy 
that from a photograph of Nephele^ 
Delisle?” 

“No,” I said. “Who is Nephele Delisle?” 

“Well,” he replied, “this is a most 
extraordinary thing if you didn't. It’s 
precisely like her — a very good likeness.” 

“ But who is she ? ” 

“ Why, as I’ve told you her name I may 
as well tell you the rest. The fact is I 
got engaged to her in the winter, but her 
people and mine don’t want it published 
till rVe taken my degree. So nobody 

knows about it, and I keep her photograph 
24 


Nephele^ 

carefully locked up— don’t even carry it 
about me for fear of accidents. Do you 
really mean you haven’t somehow found 
out about this, and copied it for me ? By 
Jove! I believe you must have. Thanks 
awfully if you did. It’s a ripping good 
picture of her.” 

I had hard work to convince him that 
this was not the case ; but at last he got 
so far as to say he’d believe me if he 
found the photograph hadn’t been re- 
moved from the place where he left it, 
and he went off to his room, which was 
only on the next staircase to me. 

He soon came back with a cabinet pho- 
tograph in his hand. 

“Well, I suppose you didn’t see this 
photograph,” he said, “as it doesn’t seem 
to have been touched, but you mtist have 
seen another ! Just look at them together.” 

He laid the photograph on the table, by 
the picture, and the likeness was certainly 
extraordinary. There was, it is true, a 
slight difference, almost indefinable, in the 
expression; and the dress, which in my 

drawing was misty and indefinite, was, in 
25 


Nephele^ 

the photograph, a becoming and fashion- 
able modern attire. But otherwise the 
resemblance was exact, with just the 
difference which makes, and will always 
make, an artist’s likeness superior to a 
photograph, the difference of life, and 
the something more,” which nothing but 
a sympathetic human touch can lend a 
picture. 

Now,” he said, “ the murder’s out for 
both of us ! I’ve had to confess to the 
engagement, and by drawing this picture 
you’ve confessed to knowing Nephelel 
Tell me when you knew her and where? 
I don’t wonder at your wanting to draw 
her. But don’t tell me she gave you her 
photograph, because I won’t believe it ! 
You got one of some one else’s, or remem- 
bered one you had seen.” 

“ My good fellow,” I said earnestly, 
“ this is a most extraordinary thing ; but 
you must really believe me. I have never 
to my knowledge seen Miss Delisle, nor a 
photograph of her ; and I drew that face 
simply out of my own head just now before 
I began playing.” 


26 


Nephele' 

He looked hard at me. 

“Will you swear that?” he said. 

“ Yes,” I said ; “if you care to ask me to 
swear it, I will.” 

“Well,” he said, “I can’t very well re- 
fuse to believe your oath, but this beats 
any thought-reading or mesmerism I’ve 
ever heard of. I can’t understand if.” 

“No more can I,” I said to myself. 

“At all events,” he went on, “you’ll 
give me this picture, won’t you ? You’ve 
managed in a wonderful way to give some- 
thing there isn’t in the photograph. Your 
picture really brings her before me more 
than this does.” 

This was just the request I had been 
dreading. It was so natural for him to 
ask — so unnatural (as it seemed) for me to 
refuse. And yet how could I give up the 
picture ? It had recalled for me that won- 
derful music ; had brought back to me 
that invisible visitant now dearer to me 
than all the visible world ; had lifted me 
into the rich golden ecstasy of a throb- 
bing first love. Already my eyes were in 

love with the pictured face, as my soul 
27 


Nephele' 

was with the unseen creature whom the 
music had invoked, or revealed to me. 

Half unconsciously I reached my hand 
out to the paper. But St. Denys, probably 
thinking I was going to refuse, hastily 
snatched at it, meaning to be beforehand 
with me. We both caught up the paper 
at the same moment, and it rent asunder 
right down the beautiful face, and we 
remained each of us holding a profitless 
portion. 

St. Denys laughed — half triumphantly. 

“That settles it ! ” he said. 

And before I thought to stop him, he 
had plucked the ragged-edged paper out 
of my hand, and torn the two halves into 
quarters and eighths and shreds, which he 
lightly fluttered out of the open window, 
to be caught and scattered and lost for- 
ever on the losel summer breezes. 


28 


Nephele^ 


CHAPTER III. 

Lord St. Denys apologized for destroy- 
ing my drawing. He was of an impulsive 
nature, and I could quite understand a 
man who was in love with that face doing 
anything if his jealousy was ever aroused. 
The loss to me was so great, that I sought 
instinctively to hide all appearance of feel- 
ing, and pretended, as best I could, that I 
did not mind. 

But the incident proved rather a breach 
in our friendship, though outwardly we 
never quarrelled; and during the re- 
mainder of that summer term we saw less 
of one another than before. 

As the end of the term drew near, he 
asked me one day if I was going to stay 
up for Commemoration ; and when I an- 
swered that I thought I should, he seemed 
a little put out. 


29 


Nepliele 

“ I thought you never did,” he said. 

“ I never have yet ; but I don’t know 
why I shouldn’t,” I answered. “ I sup- 
pose you will be up for it ?” 

“Oh yes, I suppose so. I’m one of the 
stewards of the Freemasons’ Ball. But I 
should think you’d find it precious dull 
staying up, if you don’t care for balls, and 
haven’t any people coming up.” 

It was evident that he rather hoped I 
was not going to stay up ; and it flashed 
across my mind that possibly Nephele 
Delisle was coming to Oxford for Com- 
memoration. 

I was in a most curious state of feeling 
with regard to this unknown, and yet (as 
I thought) so well-known, being. 

Since the day of the destruction of the 
picture I had had no recurrence of the 
vision, or trance, or whatever I can call it. 
I had in vain attempted to draw the face 
again, or to recall the melody with which 
it was in such a strange way associated. 

But in my own mind I did not doubt 
that the personality of whom I had been 

conscious— whom I had, so to speak, 
30 


Nephele 

evoked by music— had an objective exist- 
ence in 4he world, and was that very 
Nephele^ Delisle to whom Lord St. Denys 
declared he was engaged. 

But here came in the strangest part of 
my feeling in the matter. Though to him, 
or to any dispassionate person, it must 
have seemed that he was the rightful 
authorized lover, and I a base unjustified 
rival and intruder, to my feeling it was 
exactly the reverse. Had I not known, 
beyond the power of external looks or 
words to show, her very heart of hearts, 
and she mine ? How was it possible for 
her to be souks mate to any other than 
me ? I would not, could not, did not 
believe it. And I felt a calm, triumphant 
assurance that the time was near when 
we should meet face to face, and that 
even at our first meeting our spirits would 
be drawn together as irresistibly as the 
mist-drops come together to make the 
rain-drop. 

The very thought that she might be 
coming to Oxford sent a thrill and a throb 

through all my veins. But how could 
31 


Nephele^ 

she be coming ? Hardly on St. Denys' 
invitation, if, as he said, their engagement 
was to be kept a secret. On whose 
then ? 

I got down my Oxford Calendar, and 
found there was a Delisle an undergradu- 
ate at one of the colleges. And then I 
suddenly remembered that St. Denys had 
of late often gone out to dine at that col- 
lege with some friend whose name I had 
not heard. 

A day or two later I passed him in the 
street, walking with a man I did not know. 
They were so deep in conversation they 
did not notice me, and I heard St. Denys 
say — 

“ Then you’ll want four tickets for the 
Masonic ? ” 

“ Yes,” was the answer. 

“You’re sure Miss Delisle is coming ?” 
St. Denys went on. 

“ Quite sure. I’ve set my heart on it, 
and Nephele has too ; and when that’s the 
case in the family, the thing is considered 
a physical necessity.” 

He laughed, with a light assurance too 
32 


Nephele'^ 

pleasant to be called conceit, and they 
passed out of hearing. 

It was evident that I should have not 
only to stay up for Commemoration, but 
to go to the Masonic Ball. For that I 
should have to get a ticket. Fortunately 
I knew another of the stewards, and I at 
once went to him and asked for one. 

“ Why didn’t you get it out of Lord 
St. Denys ? ” he laughed, as I paid for it. 
“ He’s a steward, and might have let you 
have it cheap ! ” 

As to what would happen at the ball, 
how I should ever get introduced to Miss 
Delisle, or how conduct myself in this 
flagrant attempt to cut out my friend — 
of all this I hardly thought at all. My 
whole mind was intoxicated with the 
idea of seeing her, the rest would be as it 
would. 

Fortune fought on my side. 

Though I did not see much of St. 
Denys, I could not help noticing when 
we did meet a suppressed excitement, 
which increased as the end of the term 
drew near. Indeed it was evident to 
3 33 


Nephele^ 

every one. He was louder and more 
boisterous, and his ringing laugh could be 
heard all over the college more often than 
usual. 

The last night of the term there was a 
big supper. One or two wealthy men 
were leaving, and our boat had gone up 
four places, so they gave a joint supper to 
nearly the whole college. 

The younger dons were invited, and all 
passed decorously enough ; but after the 
supper St. Denys and a few others went 
off to another man’s rooms, and there, it 
seems, after a game of loo or nap, a bowl 
of punch was brewed, and they all drank 
too much. 

Anyhow, about three or four o’clock in 
the morning there was such a row in the 
Quadrangle, that I got up and looked out 
at the staircase window (my rooms faced 
the other way), and saw in the beautiful 
fresh summer morning a group of four or 
five unsteady men, in dress clothes and 
college “ blazers,” standing on the grass 
plot in the Quadrangle, and throwing 
stones with wildish aim at the college 
34 


Nephele 

clock. Lord St. Denys was conspicuous 
among them. 

The stones went wide of their object, 
and first one and then another hit the 
windows of the library, which was below 
the clock. And then I heard St. Denys 
shout — 

“ Let’s break the whole lot, and let a little 
air into the musty old books! ” 

They were in the midst of their occupa- 
tion, when I heard a window open near 
me, and almost directly after one of the 
men shouted — 

“ By Jove, there’s the Dean!” 

There was an instantaneous stampede. 
The party scattered this way and that, and 
I returned to my bed, wondering what 
would happen next day. 

By the middle of the day the fate of the 
culprits was known throughout the college. 

Lord St. Denys, who was in a tremendous 
way about it, gave this account of what had 
happened to him. 

The Master had sent for him, and began 
at once — “ Lord St. Denys, you had in- 
tended remaining in Oxford during Com- 
35 


Nephele^ 

memoration week, I believe ? Had you 
any friends coming specially for this 
occasion?” St. Denys admitted that he 
had. “ Then,” intimated the Master, pleas- 
antly, “ I think it will be as well that you 
should ask some or other of your Oxford 
acquaintance to entertain them on your 
behalf, as I must request you to be good 
enough to leave Oxford this afternoon.” 
Lord St. Denys himself was furious, and 
declared it the meanest trick he had ever 
heard of. But considering the offence, 
most of the men thought he had got off 
very lightly, and that the Master had 
neatly contrived to inflict a punishment 
which, while most effectively disagreeable 
at the moment, was not so serious as rus- 
tication for the next term, which was the 
sentence passed on the others concerned 
in the row, men whose general character 
was not so good as Lord St. Denys’. 

It was not to me, but to another friend, 
that this account had been given. 

“ Do you know whom St. Denys is ex- 
pecting ? ” I asked. 

“ No ; he didn’t say. I thought you’d 
36 


Nephele^ 

know probably, as you’re a pal of his. He 
hasn’t taken the Master’s advice, and 
handed them over to you ? ” 

“Not to me,” I answered quietly. “I 
don’t fancy they are any of his own people, 
but somebody else’s, whom he was going 
to help entertain.” 

I had rather kept out of St. Denys’ way 
till I knew he was gone. He had never 
said anything more to me about my stay- 
ing up ; and I had almost hoped now that 
he would not find out I was going to. 
But Joyce went on — 

“ By the v/ay, the poor old fellow seemed 
quite aggrieved at any one staying up, as 
he could not. He actually said he thought 
it was ridiculous of a man like you, who 
didn’t care for dancing, to stay up.” 

“ What did you say ? ” 

“ I said I happened to know you were 
going to the Masonic Ball; and that was 
the strange part of it. St. Denys seemed 
mad at this, and actually used bad lan- 
guage, which he don’t generally do.” 

Joyce was a good fellow, but fortunately 
a very dull one, and not inquisitively in- 
37 


Nephele' 

dined to speculate as to the reason of St. 
Denys’ behavior. He was also going 
down that evening; so there would be no 
chance of his seeing anything that would 
enlighten him. 

So I said to myself : and then I turned 
round on my own phrase: Seeing any- 
thing ? — but what should there be to see ?” 
And to that question I could find no 
answer, but in a quickened pulse, as I lost 
myself in an endless El Dorado of golden 
daydreams. 


3S 


Nephele 


CHAPTER IV 

It was the night of the Masonic Ball. 

The hour was at hand — so I fancied— to 
which my whole life hitherto had been but 
as a walk through weary antechambers. 

How the day had passed I could not 
have told even then : much less can I tell 
now. I had been in that state of mind 
which it is so impossible to describe to 
any who have not experienced it, which 
sounds so foolish, so unreal, so extrava- 
gant, when written of in the verse of 
young poets, the anticipation which soars, 
so high in ether that the mind trembles 
at times for fear the consummation should, 
after all, be lower. 

And yet through all I had an almost 
calm feeling of security — of certainty — that 
the being whom I had known so strangely 
in trance would prove in life just as I had 
known her. 


39 


Nephele^ 

I arrived early at the ball, and found 
few people were yet there — no one that I 
knew. I had never been much given to 
ball-going; and when I found myself in 
the large lighted hall without a person to 
speak to, I suddenly realized, what I had 
not before thought of, that to be at a ball, 
knowing nobody to dance with or even to 
speak to, is one of the most depressing 
situations in the world. 

I watched anxiously as group after'group 
of people entered, but not one person did 
I know ; and so far I did not see a single 
undergraduate with whom I had even a 
nodding acquaintance. In my own college 
there were few dancing men ; and they 
were just those who had been sent down. 

The music began, and the dancing. 
Pair after pair went by me, and I felt more 
and more alone and “out of it.” 

I kept near the entrance door, hailing 
with expectant eyes every person who 
came in ; but as time passed, and the one 
person I was looking for did not come, a 
nev7 fear, born partly of my forlornness, 
came over me. What if, after all, Nephele* 

40 


Nephel^ 

Delisle should not be in Oxford, or not 
coming to the ball ? 

And then, just as the darkness of this 
fear became almost a visible blackness 
before my eyes, I looked, and lo ! through 
the looped curtains that framed the door- 
way came a lady all in white, young and 
tall and royal ; and my heart gave a great 
throb, for the face — calm as a Greek god- 
dess, spiritual as a maid Madonna, beauti- 
ful as the World’s Desire — was the face 
that I knew so well, and had longed for so 
hopelessly. 

I do not think I made any exclamation 
or movement ; but even if I had it might 
have passed unnoticed, since she had 
hardly entered the hall, when every one, 
except those actually dancing, was look- 
ing at her. 

She seemed quite unconscious that she 
was attracting such attention. There had 
come in with her, besides an elder lady, 
who was evidently acting cha'peron^ her 
brother and another undergraduate. This 
fortunate second man became in two 

minutes the best envied man in the room ; 

41 


Nephele 

as almost immediately Miss Delisle and he 
— finding a waltz had only just begun — 
paired off together, and joined the dancers 
in the middle of the room. 

With mingled feelings I watched them. 
They both danced well, and she with a 
certain liquid rhythm which a poet of the 
last century would have ascribed to her 
having been used to the motion of wings. 
Her movements seemed like an added 
note in the music, almost as if some beauti- 
ful voice was singing the air. 

And greatly as I could have desired the 
high rapture of dancing with her, I felt no 
jealousy of her partner. That he was 
deeply moved and thrilled with the efflu- 
ence of her beauty, was evident. But while 
she talked with him, smiled at him, leaned 
on his arm, there was some indescribable 
quality of self-reservation in her manner 
which made me glad in my heart that it 
was not I who was being so talked with, 
smiled at, and leaned upon. Had it been 
1— and I so much in love as I was— I felt 
I could have gone out then and there, and 
flung myself over Folly Bridge. 


Nephele 

I have seen other women with this 
quality of manner — perfect ease and natu- 
ralness, and yet no single moment’s self- 
surrender; but never any one who had it 
so wonderfully as Nephele^ Delisle. 

But if to my jealous-lover’s state of mind 
there was this momentary satisfaction, it 
vanished the next instant in' a sudden 
agony of disappointment. For, as the pair 
came down the room in their second turn 
round, I managed to get a little in front 
of the onlookers, and for one moment 
Miss Delisle’s eyes met mine. Mine were 
fixed on her as on an old but long unseen 
friend, whose glance you know will be 
followed by glad and smiling recognition. 
Alas! there came no such recognition. A 
slight consciousness, it is true, I could 
perceive— a moment’s second look and 
very faint flush of her cheek, but only (I 
felt despondingly sure) because of my 
eager and audacious stare. She turned 
away, and though she came the same way 
again twice, nay thrice, her eyes were 
never turned again to me. 

There are blows and disappointments 
43 


Nephele 

the most lasting in effect, which yet at the 
time one hardly realizes. The physical 
nature seems often indeed more quick 
than the moral in taking in the full mean- 
ing of some great crisis. I felt that I 
turned pale, that I was trembling all over, 
and could hardly walk steadily to a friendly 
wall to lean against, while at the same time I 
was almost unconsciously making up expla- 
nations to myself for this non-recognition. 
It was easy indeed to find a thousand, in the 
vague unknown conditions of the dream- 
world in which my acquaintance with this 
beautiful creature had begun and ripened. 
That her spirit had had communion with 
mine (how empty and half cant-like sound 
these words, but the right meaning is, or 
was once, in them!) I felt absolutely sure. 
But why should it follow that she should 
know my outward appearance? I knew 
hers from my own drawing. How little 
likely was it that she should have repro- 
duced my face in the way I had hers! 

And then I tried to imagine that her 
moment’s second look at me, and the 
hardly perceptible flush on her face, had 

44 


Nephele^ 

meant something, perhaps an unconscious 
or half-conscious recognition, or at all 
events some first beginning of interest, 
which would quickly deepen when once I 
had speech with her. Perhaps the full 
revelation might come could I once play 
to her! And with this thought came the 
remembrance of my musical powers, and 
gave me again a feeling of support and 
strength. Here, surely, I had an irresist- 
ible spell. This was the language which 
must — in the outward world as in the in- 
ward — reveal the kinship of our souls. 

So I dreamed and dreamed in a little 
cloud-land of my own, while the dancing 
and the laughter and the music murmured 
round. And yet for all my reasoning and 
dreaming my pulse would not grow less 
rapid, nor my face feel of its natural color, 
till I had stood there a long, long time. 
And when at last I tried to walk, I found 
my step was still unsteady; and suddenly 
I determined to go home. It is very strange, 
I thought, how slight a shock can upset 
one sometimes! I shall be all right in my 
room, and .... 


45 


Nephele 

At this point I must have fainted and 
fallen, for my next knowledge was of sit- 
ting up on the floor, supported by two 
undergraduates — strangers to me — and 
with a glass of champagne held to my 
lips. 

I heard a man’s voice offering a man’s 
natural explanation — “ Been dancing too 
much after supper: ” and then a soft 
voice, with a thrill of incommunicable 
womanhood in it, reply — “ No, he wasn’t 
dancing. Perhaps he’s been working too 
hard.” 

I opened my eyes, and met the eyes of 
Nephele^ Delisle. 

What my eyes expressed I do not know 
— I was hardly master of myself or of them 
at the moment. But she lowered her 
lashes, with a hardly perceptible blush. 

I was rapidly getting better, and I now 
saw that it was her brother who was min- 
istering to me chiefly. With his help I 
got up, and he saw me safely into a cab, 
and actually to the gates of my own col- 
lege before he left me. 


46 


Nephele 


CHAPTER V. 

What a night I passed ! 

I fell asleep at once, and slept soundly 
enough, in so far that I was conscious of 
no outward sounds or sights. But I lived 
a life-time in dreams that night, and when 
I awoke I hardly knew if they had been 
dreams of terror or dreams of rapture. I 
felt that I had been in another world, and 
a world whose queen and centre and whole 
significance was Nephele as Beatrice was 
in Dante’s waking vision. 

So strong was this sense of coming out 
of another world, that the little ordinary 
necessaries of life seemed strange and un- 
wonted. I had to think seriously before 
I remembered to tie my neck-tie; and to 
make my tea and eat my breakfast seemed 
quite new and unusual actions. 

I found that I was very late; and when 
47 


Nephele^ 

I had finished breakfast and went out for 
a turn in our beautiful college gardens, 
the morning was more than half over. 

It was a brilliant June morning; the 
scarlet may, the laburnums, the lilacs, 
were in their glory, and the snovvy swans 
on the blue water of the Pool, centring the 
vague joy of the morning on a single spot 
of vivid beauty, seemed like the poet’s 
touch that sets all nature’s loveliness mov- 
ing round human sympathies. 

I was walking dreamily along the path 
by the waterside, drinking in the delicious 
morning through all the gates of sense, 
when I heard voices near, and looking tip, 
saw three figures approaching; and with 
a sudden flutter of pulse, a sudden up- 
lifting as if on real airy wings, I knew that 
one of the three was the Sibyl of my cave 
of dreams, Nephele^ Delisle. With her 
were her brother, and another lady, whom 
I knew well enough by sight, though not 
to speak to. She was rather notorious 
among the undergraduates by the nick- 
name of Mrs. Leo Hunter, being the wife 
of a distinguished professor, and, as she 


Nephele^ 

fondly fancied, the leader of fashionable 
society in the university. 

The brother and sister recognized me 
at once, and stopped to inquire if I was all 
right again. Both spoke with real concern, 
but the sister with some added vibration 
of sympathy, conscious or unconscious, 
that came upon me with a virtue as heal- 
ing and vitalizing as that of a master melody 
on a spirit in pain. 

Then Mrs. Hunter begged to be intro- 
duced to me. She asked if I knew Lord 
St. Denys of my college; and when I said 
that he was my chief friend, she became 
very gracious indeed, and remarked how 
fortunate they were to have met me. 
Could I spare the time to take them round 
the gardens and the college? 

And so for two blissful hours I was with 
Nephele— with her, visible, with whom, 
invisible, I had held commune so close, 
so intimate. And yet she seemed to know 
nothing of it. Sweet she was, gracious, 
divine, and withal open of heart, but only 
as to a first acquaintance, not (as I felt to 
her) as to an old and intimate friend. 

49 


Nephele 

And yet, once and again, as I lingered 
with her one moment behind the others, 
to point to a gleam of rippled reflection in 
the water, or to listen to the rich warble 
of a blackbird, who lived, my friend of 
friends, in a bush beneath the very win- 
dows of my room, she turned her eyes on 
me with a sudden puzzled glance — a sort 
of half recognition, that made my heart 
throb, and re-awoke in me the confi- 
dence that I felt when I first saw her, the 
confidence that this and none other was 
she whose spirit had visited my spirit in 
a dream of music, as angels visit sleeping 
children. 

At last she said, in those liquid tones 
of hers, “ It is very strange, but I feel every 
now and then as we are talking as if I had 
known you before somewhere. I suppose 
it is that you remind me of some one else; 
but I cannot remember who.” 

“ I could tell you how it is,” I said 
softly, “if I might.” 

I suppose she saw too much meaning in 
my words—my whole soul, with all its love, 

was in them— for she said rather hurriedly, 
50 


Nephele'" 

“ Oh, you mean because you are a great 
friend of Lord St. Denys. You know I 
am engaged to him? Of course you are 
sure to have caught the same sort of ex- 
pressions and ways of looking at things.'" 

And then, in a woman’s way, she drew 
me on to speak of him; and I, for all my 
grounded spirit, spoke warmly, as a friend 
should speak. For he was a fine and 
noble-hearted man ; and there was that in 
her which drew true words from the lips, 
even when talk was lightest, as the magnet 
draws iron out of the dust. 

And so the hours ran out, and we came 
at last to the college gates, where I must 
needs say good-bye. And I felt a sick 
forlornness of soul that I strove for very 
manhood’s sake to keep from my look and 
from my eyes. But when, oh when, 
should I walk with her or be with her 
again? And if my friend held really such 
a place in her heart, what room was there 
in it for me? 

Then all in a moment hope, that lay 
a-dying, leapt up again in eager life; for 

Mrs. Hunter was asking me to come 
SI 


Nephele" 

that evening to an “ at home at her 
house. 

“ Miss Delisle has brought her violin 
and is going to give us a treat. I dare- 
say you didn’t know that she is a wonder- 
ful player.” 

“ Oh, not wonderful,” said Nephele", 
laughing, “ only well taught.” 

“Well, I think that our poor Oxford 
taste will find it wonderful,” replied Mrs. 

Hunter. “ Dr. himself is anxious to 

hear you, and has promised to accompany 
you. It is so difficult to find any one who 
can play well enough for you.” . 

“How terrible!” laughed Nephele"". 
“ Then I must get back and practise at 
once.” 

So with the hopeful Au revoir, instead 
of the despairing Farewell, I saw them go. 
And then I went to pass the afternoon in 
dreaming on the river, where the willow- 
herb and forget-me-nots bent over their 
mirrored images, and the bright water ran 
swiftly over green waving rushes and clear 
gravelly sands. 

Dreaming in new hope; for I thought 
52 


Nephele 

now that I saw full explanation of the past 
and fair pathway for the future. Nephele 
was a lover of music — was a violin player. 
Here lay the key to the mystery. Surely 
she, even as I, had the nature that can be 
uplifted by the spell of music clean away 
from the clutch and tyranny of the physical 
brain. And surely by some unknown path- 
way, through some unexplained instinct, 
our two spirits, twins in the music world, 
had met and communed with one another 
in those two wide-sundered hours that 
stood as golden dates in my life’s memories. 

How this should be, I knew not then, 
I know not now. All old explanations 
I hold but myths and shadows. They are 
dear to me as honest seekings after a great 
and elusive truth. But I cannot think that 
any one has yet found in human language, 
or in human thought, that is built out of 
language, any symbol that in the least de- 
gree approaches the true statement of that 
which is best known, according to our 
present standpoint, as Telepathic Con- 
sciousness. Phrases one must use to be 

understood at all; and the phrase I have 
53 


Nephele 

used above shall stand, little as I think it 
expresses the reality. Our two spirits had 
met and communed by some elective 
affinity born of our love of music. Or was 
our love of music born of this^ of some 
deeper, inmost affinity of soul? 

Such were the dreams I dreamed that 
drowsy afternoon, under the June sky, 
floating on the gentle water. And deep, 
swift, full consolation poured into my soul, 
to heal it from the wound— the almost 
deadly wound—that last night it had 
received, when first I had sought my twin 
spirit in visible human eyes, and met no 
recognition. 


Nephele 


CHAPTER VI. 

The evening came— a pure, soft, starry 
evening of J une, with pale light of the passed 
day lingering in the northward sky. 

I walked out to Mrs. Hunter's house — 
by this name let me call the lady, the few 
times I shall have to name her at all. 
There I found the rooms crowded with 
people I had never seen — the most notable 
Oxford folk, and the most fashionable of 
the visitors. 

There were several rooms, all pretty full 
of people; and it was some time before I 
saw Nephele^ or her brother. At last I 
caught sight of her afar off, the centre of 
an admiring group, the queen of one 
room; and I saw it was hopeless to think 
of getting near her then. Even her brother 
did not see me, though I had a distant 
glimpse of him over other people's heads; 
and I remained unnoticed, friendless, soli- 
55 


Nephele 

tary in the sociable crowd. And my soul, 
that had opened under the sunshine of 
that happy morning in the garden, shrank 
and closed itself like a flower in rain. 
Again I felt the terrible isolation I had felt 
the night before at the ball, the sense of a 
dead man come back to a world that does 
not want him or care about him. Again I 
found a quiet spot where, leaning on the 
wall, I brooded in a valley of dark shadows, 
and saw grisly shapes, unconscious of the 
hum of talk, the laughter, the brightness 
all about me. 

Only one thing kept me from slipping 
off home in bitterness of soul— the longing 
to hear Nephele^ play. That would surely 
bring some balm to my spirit. Perhaps I 
even dared to dream of some interchange 
of thought with her by that subtle medium. 
Might not her hands have the power I had 
found in mine, to break down all that lay 
between our innermost spirits, and lend 
them communicable thought? But mo- 
ments slipped by, and it grew later and 
later, and still th^fe was no sign of move- 
ment to the room where the piano was. 


Nephele^ 

And then it happened that the hostess 
herself, passing my way, was addressed by 
some one with the very question I was 
longing to put to her, “ When are we to 
hear Miss Delisle?” 

“ Oh, I am so sorry,” was the reply, 
“ Miss Delisle will not be able to play 
to-night, as I cannot find any one who will 

venture to accompany her. Dr. sent 

word at the last minute that he was pre- 
vented from coming ; and I could not get 
another pianist. Poor Miss Delisle ! I 
fancy she is secretly relieved. Fancy 
playing to all this crowd ! and I don’t think 
any of them care much for music — except 
you, of course.” 

“ Yes,” replied the man ; “ I care very 
much. I wish I was not such a poor 
performer myself, and could offer my 
services.” 

That was all. It trembled on my lips to 
offer myself as accompanist : but shyness, 
diffidence, embarrassment, kept me back, 
and Mrs. Hunter passed on. Again and 
again I wished I had offered, but there 
came no second opportunity ; and at last, 
57 


Nephele 

feeling all hope was over, with a sort of 
suicide’s determination, I moved to the 
door to go home. I brushed rather 
roughly past some obstructing men, one 
of whom, turning round, proved to be 
Delisle. 

“ Hullo,” he said ; “ are you off ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said. “ I only came to hear your 
sister play, and I find she’s not going to.” 

‘‘No,” he said, unmoved by my almost 
rude speech. “ It’s a great shame. Several 
people have said the same. Nephele is 
in rather a way about it. She knows that 
a good many people really came to hear 
her play, like you ; and she hates disap- 
pointing them. But our hostess, it seems, 
cares very little about music herself, and 
has taken no trouble at all to find any one 
to accompany her. I hardly know any 
one here — do you ? I must say they don’t 
look a very musical lot. But I can hardly 
believe there isn’t a musician among the 
whole crowd.” 

“ Does your sister really want to play ? ” 
I asked softly. 

“Yes; I believe she does really very 


Nephele^ 

much. You see, she’s reached a stage 
when nervousness and that sort of thing 
is quite gone, and she rather enjoys play- 
ing to a mixed lot of people. She says 
it is very interesting to try and try again 
till you force some musical excitement 
out of a set of unmusical people.” 

“ Do you think she would let me accom- 
pany her ? ” 

“ You ? Do you play ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes, a little.” 

“ But ” he hesitated. 

“ Oh,” I answered, rather dryly, “ I 
know what is wanted. I shouldn’t offer 
if I thought I should make a mess of it ; 
or disfigure Miss Delisle’s playing.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” he replied, “ I 
might have known that. Come along ; 
let’s go to her ! ” 

He pulled me after him through the 
crowd, till we reached his sister. 

Look here, Neph,” he began ; Mr. 
Gerard wants to know if you will play 
with him ?” 

“If you will let me accompany you, 
rather,” I said. 


59 


Nephele 

“ Oh yes, gladly, if you really will,” she 
replied. “ I felt sure you could, if you 
would.” 

“ How could you have known that ? ” 
asked her brother, laughing. 

“ Oh,” she replied, smiling, “ we musical 
people have a lot of freemasonry, and 
recognize each other by instinct.” 

“ That’s why you avoid the bit of rude- 
ness I was guilty of,” he said, “ and don’t 
express any doubt as to Mr. Gerard’s 
powers. But if you knew, why didn’t 
you ask him before ? ” 

She did not answer. It seemed a simple 
and natural question ; and there were 
many simple and natural answers, any one 
of which I expected her to make ; that 
she hadn’t seen me in the room ; that Mrs. 
Hunter doubted if I could play. But she 
made no answer, and looking up at her I 
saw she was looking slightly confused and 
blushing slightly. That was all. But all 
who have been lovers will remember hea- 
ven-high hopes builded all in a moment 
on foundations as frail as these. Yet my 
thoughts at that moment were not quite 

6o 


Nephele 

the ordinary lover’s ; the hope that framed 
itself in me was not the dazzling audacity, 
“ She loves me ! ” Rather, as she an- 
swered not, I felt a flood of serene 
strength and knowledge. For this was 
the first firm sign that she too felt a bond 
between our spirits. That coming, all else 
would come. 

She sent her brother to tell Mrs. Hunter 
that an accompanist had been found, while 
she went herself to fetch her violin, refus- 
ing the many offers made to fetch it for 
her ; and I made my way to the drawing- 
room where the piano was. 

Soon I heard Mrs. Hunter proclaiming 
the news on all sides. “ So glad. Miss 
Delisle’s brother has found some one to 
play for her. And as she came nearer, I 
caught her laughing “ aside.” “ I hope 
he can play. Rather audacious to offer, 
don’t you think ? ” And several others 
seemed to think the same. 

That I did not mind. Like Miss Delisle, 
in my own department of performance, I 
had passed the stage of nervousness and 
diffidence. 


Nephele 

She came up with her violin. 

“ Where is your music ? ” asked one of 
the men. “ Shall I get it for you ?” 

“ No, thank you ; I play without music.'' 

“ But your accompanist will want 
some." 

“ Isn’t it here ? " she said, looking 

round the piano. “ I sent it to Dr. 

to look at, as he was going to accompany 
me. Hasn’t he sent it back ? " 

It was soon found that he had not, and 
a murmur of disappointment rose from all 
around at this fresh difficulty. 

For a moment I was taken aback. I 
had done very little violin accompanying, 
and knew hardly any scores. One only, 
that I had lately played with a friend, 
came to my mind. It was a duet 
of Beethoven’s, for violin and piano, 
which I had had some difficulty in mas> 
tering, and therefore remembered pretty 
accurately. 

I turned to Miss Delisle. 

“ Do you play Beethoven's sonata in 
~ ? ” I asked. 

“Yes," she said. “How did you guess? 

62 


Nephele^ 

It was the very piece I was going to play 
to-night as my principal piece.” 

“Then I think I can accompany you 
without notes,” I said. 

I laid my fingers on the piano to give 
her the A. It was a good piano, in good 
tune. I felt I could do my best on it, and 
I ran up and down in a score of modula- 
tions, bringing out the four violin notes, 
as she tuned her strings. 

“Ah!” she cried, “delicious! This is 
worth living for, to be accompanied with 
a touch like that.” 

Sweet, sweet praise from sweet, sweet 
lips ! Shall I ever forget the thrill it gave 
me? 

Then we began. 

You remember that in Beethoven’s 
sonata in — , the pianist plays the air first, 
a quiet, gentle, strong air, like the June 
notes of a blackbird ; then the violin takes 
up the same air, while the piano subsides 
into the lower place, and gives broken 
fragments and flashes back to the violin 
melodies, as rippling water reflects broken 
fragments of the moonlight. 


Nephele^ 

But oh, that air as she played it ! I had 
put my whole self soul into it as I played 
it in prelude ; and she answered me, cry 
for cry, soul to soul, agony to agony, I had 
almost said love to love. But love was not 
in that music: the vision of love, the 
dream, the hope, the splendor of love, 
were there ; but love itself was some Para- 
dise beyond, to which that music was up- 
lifting the dwellers on a lower world. 

And this was what we played : I, in the 
piano part, had wakened some lovely im- 
mortal out of a charmed sleep; wakened 
her with a song sung lightly, in gayety of 
heart, the mellifluous lip-song of a min- 
strel-poet, who sings of passion he has 
fancied but not felt. She, in the violin 
part, had caught up my own song and 
flung it back to me with a new meaning, 
no more as a light love-lyric, but as a high 
principle of life, the cadenced code of a 
Heaven whose laws are Love. This 
dreaming goddess-plaything I had so idly 
wakened, proved for me a most dread, yet 
most beautiful, spirit of lofty and imperi- 
ous monition. And the music became an 
64 


Nephele' 


unceasing warfare ; at first the struggling 
of my sluggard soul, reluctant to slough 
its poet-dreams and go forth to the world 
of action, yet slowly won by the nobler 
instincts of its own nature echoing to the 
noble call ; till I arose, armed and ready 
and resolved, and went as Barak inspired 
by Deborah, to do great deeds and endure 
great sorrows, and attain at last to splendid 
death or splendid victory — which, the 
music told not, for music knows no differ- 
ence between this crown and that. 

All this we lived through in the play- 
ing of that wonderful music. And she 
felt it even as I did — felt it, spoke it, 
thrilled with it, throbbed with it. It was 
a duet in a sense that no music was ever a 
duet before— a duet of soul answering to 
soul, speaking a language ready phrased, 
yet speaking it as the expression of their 
own inmost thought. 

Ah, that it could last ! But if there is a 
Purgatory that leads up to Heaven, there 
is the converse, a Liberty of Heaven that 
leads down to Hell. All lovers know it— 

I most of all. 

5 


6S 


Nephele^ 

It could not last. The close grew nearer 
and nearer, and at last, in exquisite accord 
of movement and tone and dying grada- 
tions, our hands came to rest. 

I could not look up — I felt hardly my- 
self. I was dimly conscious of a hush, 
that was a fuller testimony even than the 
tempest of applause that followed. Also 
I was conscious that Nephele was under 
much the same spell as I was, that she was 
motionless beside me, hardly attentive to 
all the plaudits and congratulations poured 
into her ear. 

Slowly the outside world became real 
again, and I looked up ; and for one 
moment met her eyes, and for one moment 
drank the liquidest sympathy ever poured 
from eye to eye. Then we both looked 
away, and I distinguished what people 
were saying. 

“ How wonderful ! ” “Finer than Ne- 
ruda. ” “ Such sympathy.” “ It drew me 

as near as a toucher.” 

There was Mrs. Hunter bustling up. 

“Oh, Miss Delisle, you must play us 

something more ! It is quite wonderful ! 

66 


Nephele" 

Every one says so. Do play something 
more ! ” 

Nephele turned to me. 

“ I am afraid it depends more on Mr. 
Gerard than on me, as I have no music 
here, and he has to accompany me by 
heart. Do you know anything else as 
well as this?’’ 

“Nothing as well,” I said; “indeed I 
fear I could hardly venture on any other 
piece. I happen to have played that 
sonata quite lately.” 

She ran over a number of names, but I 
had to say No to each. At last she said 
aside to me — 

“Would you venture on an experiment ? 
Shall we try the audience with an impro- 
visation ?” 

“Do you think we could manage it?” I 
returned. 

“Yes, if you will play an air, I think I 
can pick it up after you, and follow your 
lead in a few variations, provided they are 
comparatively simple.” 

And then there happened a wonderful 

thing. For while I was hesitating a 
67 


Nephele 

moment, waiting for some melody to sug- 
gest itself to my brain or my fingers, sud- 
denly there came over me the full memory 
of the air I had played twice before, on 
those memorable days when I had first 
known in the spirit world the girl now 
standing by me. And I began to play 
it. 

Once I played it through, the soft, 
strong, subtle, dulcet melody, that seemed, 
now I knew her, to be the very expression 
of this girl-creature by me. 

Then she took it up on her fiddle-strings 
— firmly, fully, unfalteringly — and she too 
played it through once ; and as I wound 
an accompaniment in and out and around 
her strong delicious notes, I felt through 
me, and through and through me, the old 
feeling of spirit-converse with the un- 
known, unseen, glorious girl-spirit I had 
known before. Only now she stood 
beside me, and the joy, the delight, the 
rapture, were tenfold increased. 

And then, just as I was 5delding myself 
to this feeling, and beginning to lead her 

into such innermost musical communion 
68 


Nephele 

as I had before held with her, snap — her 
E string had broken. 

Was it an accident? The hot room 
would account for it. But was it an 
accident ? Or had some half-involuntary 
violence of hers done it? Had she, in her 
maidenhood, resented, resisted, this inti- 
macy? 

Alas! the dream was over for the time. 
She turned half abruptly, half apologeti- 
cally, round to Mrs. Hunter — 

“ I am very sorry. That’s the end, you' 
see!" 

“ Haven’t you another E string ? ’’ I ven- 
tured to ask, but she paid no heed to me. 

As before, there were many voices 
complimenting her, one or two of the 
compliments including me. One man — 
the music-loving man to whom Mrs. 
Hunter had spoken before — came up to 
me, and began speaking most warmly of 
the improvisation, of the extraordinary 
sympathy with which we had managed to 
fit in with one another, and of the strange 
beauty of the air. 

“ It is very delicate, very elusive. I can 
69 


Nephele 

generally catch an air pretty readily, but I 
cannot get more than the merest impres- 
sion of this. Would you mind playing it 
once again?” 

I put my fingers to the keys to begin, 
when Miss Delisle, who was standing with 
her back to us, turned quickly round. 

“Please don’t play it again!” she said 
imperiously, and moved swiftly away up 
to her brother. 

Almost immediately afterwards I heard 
them saying their farev/ells to Mrs. Hunter, 
and before I could reach them they were 
gone — gone! 

The man beside me had heard the sharp 
command, and looked astonished, but he 
said nothing. 

I soon took my leave, and walked home 
in a tumult of thought. Why, I repeated 
to myself again and again, why was I not 
to play that air again? Ah, Nephele""! is it 
that you still resist the knowledge that you 
are mine — that we are one? Ah, sweet, 
maidenly N ephele ! think you that you can 
escape me? Have I not in this air a spell 

to command your spirit when I wish, 
70 


Nephele 

wheresoever your body may be? Yes! I 
will once again compel you, dear strug- 
gling captive! You shall, only for a few 
moments, speak with me yet again this 
night! 

I reached my rooms, opened the piano, 
laid my fingers on the keys to begin the 
spell-like melody, and lo! it would not 
come ! It was gone from me again as hope- 
lessly as before ! I was a magician without 
his wand— tricked, cheated, beaten, where 
I had meant to be a captor. And as I 
remembered that I had no more prospect 
of meeting Nephele, no hope of speaking 
with her, no power to move her, I laid my 
arms in a reckless crash on the keyboard, 
and wept and wept, as I had not wept 
since manhood dried the fount of my boy- 
hood’s tears. 


71 


Nephele 


CHAPTER VII. 

The morning came, chilly with wind and 
rain. I made one more vain effort to 
recapture the lost melody, and then began 
to pack my things for going down. I 
knew — I forget how — that the Delisles, 
brother and sister, were leaving Oxford 
that day. I had a faint half-hope I might 
find them travelling by the same train as 
I did. Indeed, I purposely let one train 
go while I stood on the platform, to get 
one more chance by waiting for the next. 
But all in vain. I found myself being 
carried away from all hope; and in a semi- 
stupor tried to face life as it looks to the 
world again, and put aside my dreams. 

I have no clear recollection of that long 
vacation. I pulled myself together some- 
how, enough to work very hard, for I was 
to go in formy Mus. Bac. before Christmas; 
and I remember dimly working on and on 

72 


Nephele* 

without much feeling, much as a galley 
slave works, or a man on a tread-mill. I 
was in a remote part of Wales, and heard 
nothing of any Oxford or other news. 

When the October term began I went 
up to Oxford, and in spite of my resolu- 
tions — for I had made many between 
despair and pride — I found my heart beat- 
ing quicker, and my brain weaving a 
thousand schemes or fantasies whereby I 
might again meet Nephele^Delisle. Should 
I not hear of her from Lord St. Denys ? 
Might I not find her address by chance if 
he wrote to her? Might she not be coming 
again to Oxford? 

And yet these were but the idlest dreams. 
I did not intentionally dwell on them, but 
rather tried to banish them, and to fix my 
mind entirely on my approaching examina- 
tion and my after career. 

Lord St. Denys came up with the rest 
of the college and greeted me warmly, 
even affectionately, as of old, and began 
almost at once to speak of Miss Delisle. 

“ Nephele* told me she had seen you, and 
found out you and I were friends; and she 
73 


Nephele’ 

told me of your accompanying her, and 
said she had never been so well accom- 
panied in her life. Doesn’t she play 
well ? ” 

“Yes, wonderfully,” I answered, not 
without an effort of self-restraint. “ It 
was a great delight to play with her.” 

“ If I take my degree this term,” he con- 
tinued, “ we’re to be married in February, 
and get abroad for a bit in March. I’ve 
been reading pretty hard in the Long, and 
ought to pass all right, I think. By Jove, 
with such a prize for success, it’s enough 
to make the laziest fellow turn to and 
grind.” 

I shut back an iron gate on my clamor- 
ing feelings, and quietly led him on to talk 
about Miss Delisle. 

We were in my rooms, late at night, and 
he was unusually frank, friendly, and inti- 
mate. He told me his whole heart’s 
history, and how he had first met Nephele, 
and how he had first dared hope she loved 
him. And as he spoke of his love for her, 
his fine honest face lit up, and he became 
almost a different being from the riding, 
74 


Nephele^ 

rowing, cricketing man I knew. Not that 
he had not always had another side, and 
many finer tastes and feelings. But he 
had the reserve of his caste : and even to 
me had never laid his innermost self so 
bare before. 

Every word was like a stab in my heart. 
This, I thought, is no light boyish love 
that can be diverted or treated as nothing. 
It is a deep true passion to be reckoned 
with. Only — and this is the all in all — 
does Nephele" love him really? My mind 
was drifting off in this way even as he was 
speaking, when as a sort of answer to my 
unspoken thought I heard him saying — 

“ Do you remember last term, the pic- 
ture you drew, and how it got torn?” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ I remember it well.” 

“ Do you know,” he went on, half blush- 
ing, “ I was a great fool about that. I 
didn’t know Nephele' so well then as I do 
now; and though she had plighted her 
love to me, I didn’t feel sort of absolutely 
secure. And— don’t be angry with me, 
old fellow — I was really absurd enough to 
'feel jealous of your having her picture, 
75 


Nephele^ 

and I didn’t want you to stay up to Com- 
mem, and see her. I knew how musical 
she is; and I thought, like an idiot, that 
there would be some sort of musical sym- 
pathy between you and her, if you ever 
met. Now I know that was all rot. She 
has told me — but there, I can’t tell you 
about that, it’s too sacred to me. But I 
am as sure of her love as I am of the 
love of my mother,” he said seriously. 
“ All the same she took to you very much, 
and spoke most warmly of you. There,” 
he ended, with a sigh of relief, “ I wanted 
to say that to you, and now it’s said. And 
now we’re as good friends as ever we 
were, and when we’re married you will 
come and stay with us, won’t you, and ac- 
company Nephele again?” 

I said I would, while a red-hot iron 
seared and numbed my heart, and with a 
sudden grasp of the hand he left me. My 
friend— my friend — a friend worthy of 
much sacrifice, of much self-obliteration! 

I swore I would be loyal to him. I 
shrank from the vow as from putting fire 

to my own flesh; but I swore it before 
76 


Nephele 

God, on my knees. Whatever secret, 
mysterious tie there was between Nephele^ 
and me, or between some inmost spirit 
of her and of me, I swore that I would 
seek after nothing more ; and that what- 
ever measure of her heart and love he 
had — and I could not doubt that he 
had much — I would look upon as settled 
and sealed and sacred. That some deeper 
or higher measure of her love might have 
been mine — ay, was mine, if I could claim 
it in the waking world as I had known it 
in the world of dream — I doubted not. 
But it was plain, I thought, that of this she 
had herself no suspicion; that she looked 
on those moments in which her dreams 
had been one with mine as vain, idle, un- 
real; and thought, in all the honesty of her 
crystal soul, that she was giving to this fine 
and noble-hearted lover a full-hearted love. 

I rose from my knees with my heart 
drained of all its life-blood, but with the 
peace of a good conscience before God 
and before man, and, with trembling limbs 
and beaded forehead, took out my books 
to do my evening’s work. I found I could 
77 


Nephele' 

do nothing of it; and after several vain 
attempts, gave it up and went to bed. 

I did not know that I slept. I thought 
that I tossed and turned and could not 
sleep; and yet I found afterwards that I 
must have slept deeper than I knew. For 
suddenly I woke — woke to find myself 
not in my bed, but sitting up at the 
writing-table in my other room. I had 
my night-things on, as if I had walked 
straight from my bed in my sleep. The 
morning had come, and the sun was shin- 
ing outside, making the red window-cur- 
tains crimson transparencies. Two candles 
were lighted before me; I had a pencil in 
my hand, and was actually, when I woke, 
putting a finishing touch to a drawing; 
and the drawing was the drawing I had 
made once before, the likeness of Nephele 
Delisle — not, strange to say, as I had seen 
her in life, but just as I had drawn her 
before, with some ethereal touch that 
in life slept for me, perhaps for all — some 
added divine air which perhaps no eyes, 
not even mine, might ever see in her act- 
ual face. 


73 


Nephele’ 

All that I have written I took in in the 
tithe of a second, as the mind takes in what 
concerns it deeply. I heard the noise of 
my scout outside the door, and knew that 
it was his unlocking the “ oak,” or outer 
door, that had awakened me. I seized the 
drawing, hastily thrust it into a portfolio 
of drawings, and went into my bedroom 
again. The candles I left burning, and I 
heard the scout, coming in, make some ex- 
clamation, and then blow them out. He 
probably thought that I had been sitting 
up very late, and forgotten to put them 
out. 

I lay in bed trembling with excitement, 
and trying to picture what could have hap- 
pened. The dual self, which is observed 
in cases of sleep-walking and hypnotism, 
had in my case never been divided before, 
or brought into contradictory action. But 
now it was plain that while my usual self 
— to use easy words — had, under the im- 
pulse of a conscientious resolve, been pass- 
ing a night of weary wretchedness, the 
other self, or “ subliminal consciousness,” 
had once more experienced the dream of 
79 


Nephele" 

Nephele^ and reproduced on paper her 
face. Had I not been awakened I should 
probably have next gone on to play on the 
piano the Nephele air, and to meet her 
again in the musical dream world. 

And as I thought this, there came over 
me, with sudden intoxication, the convic- 
tion that with that face before me I could 
reproduce at will the divine melody that 
was the spell between her spirit and me — 
could at will force her spirit, wherever her 
body might be, to hold intimate commu- 
nion with mine. My heart throbbed, my 
pulses beat in tempest. I sprang from 
my bed to bathe and dress and rush to my 
piano to try the charm. 

The fresh wholesome chill of the cold 
v/ater of my bath woke a new feeling — a 
feeling that I fought against with actual 
physical movements of set teeth and 
strained muscles, but that yet returned 
anew, and overbore resistance, and con- 
quered — conquered, thank God ! as I now 
can say. Then, I could not : then, the 
victory of conscience-conscience which 
told me that to seek again that spirit- 


Nephele' 

intercourse would be to break the vow I 
had made a few hours before — brought me 
only a relaxed body, a crushed spirit, a 
nerveless numbed consciousness of deso- 
lation and a darkened world. 

But as I thought again all my thoughts 
of over-night: of Nephele, the memory of 
whom was as a fire to shrivel all unworthi- 
ness: of my true-hearted friend, simple in 
his trust of me, simple in his single-hearted 
love for Nephele^ : I could no other. And 
again, with what energy my flagging pulses 
lent, I repeated my vow ; adding to the 
vague resolves of the night the clear con- 
crete decision of the morning, that never, 
save at Nephele'^’s own bidding — could that, 
par impossible^ be — would I play that 
music; never try the spell that would 
summon her spirit to company with mine, 
lest haply it should lead her to more inti- 
mate self-knowledge and to the discovery 
of deeper well-heads of love in her un- 
fathomed maiden heart, springs whose 
flowing should be for another than him 
she now loved so truly — aye, loved, as she 
believed, to the utmost meaning of love. 

6 8i 


Nephele^ 

As I framed this resolve, I heard the 
chapel bell sound ; and going out to chapel, 
there in my place kneeling, I solemnly 
renewed my vow; and in the memories of 
all self-denials made by the noble dead be- 
fore me, helped and heartened my soul to 
take up its part of that sacrifice of self to 
large aims and ideal creeds and causes, 
which makes the world’s hope of some far- 
off earthly paradise. 

There were few men in chapel. I spoke 
to none; and when I returned to my room, 
I felt serenity and strength of soul enough 
to meet the peril of looking again on that 
lovely face which my own hands, sleep- 
constrained, had brought up upon the 
passionless white paper. 

I opened the portfolio, and took out the 
drawing and set it up before me. 

It was very lovely, with a touch of 
ineffable tenderness in the softened eyes, 
a hint of some divine pity in the mobile 
lips, a trace of some undefined trouble in 
the delicate eyebrows ; the whole likeness 
seeming rather the visible expression of 
the soul of a glorious girl-being, than 

82 


Nephele 

merely a drawing of that time-moulded 
life-mask, the human face. 

And as I gazed on it two things befell 
me— one expected and one surprising. 
For I found, as I had foreseen, that the 
old melody that had brought her to me 
arose again in my head, and sounded 
softly in my ears, like the undertone of 
ocean to one gazing on its sunlit glory ; 
but, on the other hand, I found the 
heightened temper of self-sacrifice not 
weakened but rather strengthened by 
gazing on that noble face. I felt no new 
assailment of temptation, but a rush of 
more vigorous resolve. So that I realized 
— with white purity of joy that had the 
sting of pain— that my surest bulwark 
would ever be the looking at this picture; 
that I need not destroy it, or bury it away 
as a banned, forbidden joy, but might look 
on it whenever I would, and drink thereat 
strength* against temptation, and such 
solace as was left for a soul cut off from 
hope. 

And so I kept this treasure, locked away 

from all eyes, and only drawn out at safe 
83 


Nephele* 

times of privacy, usually late at night, 
when my oak was sported, and all the 
college was asleep, and I was working on 
and on at the hard reading needful for 
my musical degree. 

Until one night, as I sat wdth the face 
before me, having laid aside my books for 
a moment, and having a sheet of music- 
paper ready for exercises under my hands, 
it suddenly came into my head to write 
down the Nephele air that was sounding 
ceaselessly in my ears. Easily it flowed 
from my pen on to the paper; and then 
followed the violin part, as Nephele her- 
self had played it, holding the air against 
the under-cry of an accompaniment, half 
sympathy, half remonstrance. Then came 
variations and changes of key, and all the 
voluble mastery of speech, in which music 
has such infinite resources. And as the 
hours of night rolled by, I wrote down, 
all unconscious of time, the whole inti- 
mate communings that I had held with 
the spirit of Nephele — the trembling dawm 
of shy intimacy, the opening revelations 
of soul to soul, the deepening friendship. 


Nephele^ 

the growing confidence, the full trust, and 
then the inchoate sweetest of sweetest, the 
fledgeling timorous softness of beginning 
love, the love that I had realized, and 
which had grown in my very heart’s core, 
but which she had, I fancied, yet fought 
against and kept at bay in her maiden 
soul, as a girl resists the conviction of what 
she feels is, and will be, her master. 

All this, that no speech of man could 
ever express, took perfect and complete 
expression in the music that flowed out of 
my living soul upon the dead unsensitive 
paper. 

The end came — no satisfying end ; how 
could it be ? The end was not yet — might, 
nay, I thought, would, never be. But 
some sort of close, tentative, unfinal, a 
pause with more of aroused and strained 
expectation than of rest, came at last to 
make an end for the time. 

“ Will there ever be any truer, more 
final end ? ” I sighed, as I laid down the 
pen with aching fingers. And looking up 
I saw that the daylight was begun. 

I dried the last sheets, rose, and flung 
85 


Nephele* 

open the window overlooking the gardens. 
It was a late October morning, misty and 
chilly. There was light, but no sun. Dead 
leaves covered the thick dewy grass, and a 
cold mist came in through the open win- 
dow. I shivered and shut it ; and locking 
up my night’s work with the face that had 
evoked it, I went to a short and dream- 
troubled sleep. 


Nephele 


CHAPTER VIII. 

The fuller close, the final satisfaction, 
of that music was to come, in a way I 
dreamed not of. But it did not come yet, 
and though I more than once read the 
score over silently, seeking for some more 
satisfactory ending, I was always obliged 
to put it away again untouched. 

The term passed. I saw Lord St. 
Denys often, and had pleasant, friendly, 
affectionate intercourse with him, in which 
he spoke much of Nephele. Nor, after 
the first, did it pain me to hear him. I 
had grown into a life of self-repression 
and hard duty ; and as every one who 
has lived it knows, this life becomes a 
habit after a while, and the daily acts of 
self-injury give a sort of half-sullen, half- 
savage pleasure, like the self-scourging of 
an ascetic. 

I knew surely that in giving up Nephele^ 
87 


Nephele" 

I was losing the great and golden glory 
that should have been mine, the rightful 
heritage of my birth and being in the 
world ; but the overriding pressure of 
loyalty kept me true to my self-surren- 
der. 

I was, I said to myself, as a forest fir- 
tree, born to a birthright of straight and 
lofty growth, and lopped of its leading 
shoot too late to make another, too early 
to give up life, and decay and die quietly 
away. 

I was fain to find a makeshift substitute 
for the lost aspiration in my musical 
ambition ; but alas ! this was so intimately 
connected with the desire of Nephele^, 
that its vigor must needs be much 
minished in the loss of her. 

Yet I worked hard for my musical de- 
gree, and when the time came, passed 
with some distinction and a compliment 
from the examiners. It was now neces- 
sary that I should make my living in some 
way, and I determined to try to do so by 
music. 

I therefore called, before I left Oxford, 
88 


Nephele^ 

on one of the examiners who had com- 
plimented me, and diffidently asked him 
whether he could help me at all. He was 
one of the leading musicians of Oxford, 
and received me very kindly, and talked 
to me openly, but without giving me much 
hope. 

Briefly put, his dictum was that to make 
any income above that of an ordinary or- 
ganist Vv^as very hard work : the openings 
were few, and the competitors very 
numerous. Teaching was the best way 
to make money ; but it was great drudgery. 
My best plan, he suggested, was to seek a 
post as organist — the best I could get, and 
then begin to take pupils. 

This was rather dismal-sounding advice. 
But it was given very kindly, and I thanked 
him and rose to go. As I was at the door 
he said — 

“ Of course, there is composition : you 
showed some facility for that in your 
examination. It is not ‘ paying ’ until you 
make a name ; but I advise you to keep 
up the habit. Have you attempted any- 
thing hitherto? 


89 


Nephele' 

“ Nothing much,” I said, “ but a song 
or two.” 

“ Let me see them,” he said kindly. 

“ I know Mr. , the music publisher, 

and he would publish any songs on my 
recommendation, if I could give it hon- 
estly.” 

I went off to my rooms, and brought 
back with me my portfolio. As I began 
to open it, he took it out of my hands 
in his rapid way, and turned the con- 
tents quickly over. The songs were not 
lofty flights, and he shook his head over 
them. 

“ Reminiscences of Sullivan, Molloy, 
etc.,” he said. “ No, I am afraid there is 

nothing here which I Hullo, what is 

this?” 

I had not remembered when I brought 
the portfolio that I had slipped the Nephele 
music — as I called it to myself — in there 
the day before in a hurry, having been 
interrupted in a vain attempt to think out 
a better close. 

The title on the paper was merely “ A 
Sonata for Violin and Piano.” 

90 


Nephele 

“This is something more ambitious/' 
he said, and began rapidly reading it. 
After a few pages, he looked up, with a 
very different expression. 

“ Is this your composition ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said. “ At least it came to me 
— not from anything I ever heard.” 

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “of 
course. All great art-work comes so.” 

He jumped up, went hastily to the 
piano, and began to play my music. 

I had never heard it played before by a 
stranger. At first it startled me, as if it 
were a sacrilege. But in a few min- 
utes this feeling subsided, and I listened 
in a strange mood of self-pity to the 
strong master hands interpreting my love- 
dream. 

He played it right through, touching in 
the violin part lightly where required to 
complete the themes, and then turned 
abruptly round to me. 

“ This alters the whole case. I thought 
you a clever young apprentice. Sir, you 
are a Master. Nothing like this has been 

written in England in this generation. If 
91 


Nephele 

you fulfil the promise of this music, you 
will be the greatest musician of true 
English birth that has ever lived.” 

He spoke earnestly, strongly, with actual 
emotion. And a hundred conflicting feel- 
ings were at tumult in my heart — natural 
upliftings of pride, the ever present weight 
of hopelessness, and a doubt if this music 
was really my own. Could I truly claim 
it ? If not, whose was it ? Where did it 
come from, into my brain or fingers ? 

The good and energetic old musician 
was already at his writing-table, scribbling 

a note. “There,” he said, “ this is to , 

the great Director of concert music. 
Only last week he was imploring me to 
give him some new concert piece, my own, 
or any one’s : ‘ something to fetch the 
music-people,’ he said. ‘ They are com- 
plaining that they know all the old things, 
and that all the new things are Made in 

Germany^ like the toys. Do, Dr. , 

give me a good bit of English music to 
satisfy them ! ’ This is just the very thing. 
I’ll send it to him at once, and tell him to 
write to you about it. The only thing I 

92 


Nephele' 

want altered is the end,” he went on. 

It’s like what’s been said of Homer. It 
doesn’t finish but leaves off. Don’t you 
think that you could make more of a 
finale f ” 

I explained to him that I had tried 
several times, unsuccessfully. 

“ Well,” he said, kindly, “ I won’t press 
it. It’ll do as it is, though no doubt it 
leaves the ear unsatisfied — leaves a ‘ to-be- 
continued’ feeling. But I know how hard 
it is to get the real Muse, when she comes, 
to work to order ; and I won’t touch your 
work, I should probably only botch it. 
Some day you’ll have an inspiration, and put 
the worthy climax to this beautiful piece. 
There, good-bye, I must run, or I shall 
be late for my meeting,” and I found my- 
self bustled out of the room and walking 
home — without my music ! 

And then I began to think the scene 
over ; and the vague hesitations and re- 
sistances that I had felt took swift and 
definite shape. This music was to me a 
part of my life, the dearest, most intimate 
part of my very soul ; and I had let it go 
93 


Nephele" 

from me — go, to pass into the hands of a 
concert-master, to be performed, to cease 
to be my own, to become a “public 
thing ! ” 

I could not bear the thought. I turned 

hastily, and went back towards Dr. 's 

house. Hardly had I got more than a 
few steps, however, when he passed me 
in a cab, driving fast. He saw me, and 
waving his hand called out — 

“ It’s all right. I’ve posted it.” 

There was no hope then, no help. I 
turned homeward, sore in heart, and 
tormented in conscience, and yet with 
a lurking proud delight, as the thrill 
of success, present and possible, came 
to me. 

And something more there was — some 
undefined, elusive feeling. I had kept my 
vow, I had been true, I had been faithful. 
But the issue had been suddenly, strangely, 
taken out of my hands. My creation was 
henceforth to have a destiny of its own, 
independent of its creator’s will. And in 
that new-born destiny what other destinies 
were involved? Would Nephele^ not 
94 


Nephele^ 

surely hear the music ? Would she not 
recognize it ? Might she not even play it ? 
And if so 

Shame rushed over me, and I walked 
on with quicker, more resolute stride, 
repeating to myself, “ I will be true ! I 
will be faithful ! 


95 


Nephele^ 


CHAPTER IX. 

Two days after, I got a letter from the 
London Concert-Director. I need not 
repeat all he said. Briefly, it was very 
flattering. He should be delighted, he 
said, to bring out this new piece at a grand 
evening concert he was going to give in 
F ebruary ; and he offered me terms which, 
even to my inexperienced and therefore 
grandiose ideas, seemed very handsome. 
He added that, as time was of importance, 
he should be glad to have my answer as 
soon as possible, and if I was in Town and 
would call, he would like to see me. 

Yet it was twenty-four hours before I 
could answer his letter. I saw all it meant 
— name, fame, and a firm foot on the ladder 
of success. Yet for a day and a night I 
could not make up my mind what to do. 
Was this music mine to deal with? 
Should I be breaking my resolve, or act- 


Nephele' 

ing untruly by my friend, if I let the train 
of events take their course ? 

I took out my picture of Nephele', and 
sat gazing on it ; not as superstitious souls 
might gaze on a Madonna, seeking a sign 
from the dumb pencilled features ; but to 
know what answer my conscience would 
make, when brought before such a judg- 
ment-seat. But I got neither sign nor 
answer. 

“Ah,” I said, “if I could see Nephele" 
herself ! ” And even as I said this, by one 
of those curious felicities which we have 
all experienced, came the opportunity of 
doing so. The college messenger at that 
actual moment brought me a letter from 
Lord St. Denys, who had gone down a 
few days before. He asked me to spend 
a night at his father’s house in Town on 
my way home, and said that Nephele^ 
would be there, and would like very much 
to meet me again. 

I sat down and wrote off an acceptance 
to him, and the next day left Oxford for 
London. 

All the way in the train I was debating 
7 97 


Nephele 

with myself how I should ask my question. 
Should I try to speak to Nephele alone, 
or should I say what I wanted before Lord 
St. Denys ? The latter seemed the more 
upright and straightforward course, if I 
could only so phrase my question as to 
give no hint of any secret understanding 
with Nephele^ There was, of course, no 
such understanding between us ; but in 
my fancy, or in my dreams, she and I had 
spoken soul to soul, and I felt that, unless 
I was on my guard, the remembrance of 
this must affect me in speaking. 

I was warmly welcomed in Park Lane. 
I had seen both the Earl and Countess 
before, and they always treated me as their 
son’s intimate friend — kindly, intimately, 
on the pleasantest footing. 

And I saw Nephele again, and she 
greeted me frankly, with straight, clear, 
innocent eyes — so beautiful, so supra- 
earthly, so worship-worthy. And yet I 
swear that I felt in her presence no more 
of the fever of love than I had felt in those 
rare times of music-meeting. Nay, but 
less. My love for her was of such ethe- 

98 


Nephele^ 

real diaphanous spirit-essence, so wholly 
untinged and untainted with the very 
slightest clouding of earthy feeling, that her 
bodily presence had no more effect upon 
it than a magnet has on gold. Our affini- 
ties were too deep, too far from the touch- 
ing of hands or the glances of eyes. Even 
the music of her exquisite speech did not 
disturb me, as a w^oman’s voice in its beau- 
ty will disturb, while it charms, her lover. 

It so chanced that I had almost at once 
the opportunity I wanted. Nephele and 
Lord St. Denys and I were alone together, 
and he began to ask me of my prospects ; 
and I then told him, while Nephele^ sat 

listening, of my interview with Dr. , 

how he had treated my song-writing with 
contempt, and how his tone had changed 
on his discovering the violin sonata. I 
softened off the overmuch of the old man’s 
kindly enthusiasm, but told how he had 
sent the sonata to London, and of the 
Director’s offer. 

Nephele broke out in delight — 

“ Oh, how, very good ! That is delight- 
ful ! And what have you said ?” 

99 


LofC. 


Nephele^ 

“Well,” I went on, “to tell the truth, I 
waited till I had seen you, for it happens 
that I have a curious feeling about that 
music. Do you remember the evening that 
I accompanied you at Oxford, and how we 
indulged in an improvisation afterwards ? ” 
There was no shadow of confusion in the 
lovely face, no moment’s wavering in the 
glance of the frank eyes, as she replied — 
“ Of course I do ! It was a lovely air 
you played. Is it that that you have 
turned into a sonata?” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ and I did not like to 
use it without your permission.” 

“ My permission ?” Shelaughed. “That 
is a great bit of gallantry, isn’t it, St. 
Denys? Because I was present at the 
birth of the work? We are pleased,” she 
went on, in mock dignity, “to give our 
most gracious permission for the use of 
this piece of music in any way that Mr. 
Gerard desires. Is that right ? ” 

So it ended. The matter, to me so 
serious and important, had been treated 
merely as a jest or a compliment ; and I 
felt a curious mixture of feelings — half 

lOO 


Nephele^ 

relief, half resentment. What if I had 
not vowed my vow ? What if I had drawn 
her spirit into communion with mine 
again by means of this same music? 
Would she have treated the matter so 
lightly then ? 

Nay, I would not be moved ! My vow 
was sacred ; her love and happiness, and 
that of my friend, should not be for one 
moment imperilled by me ! 

Yet, when in the evening I once again 
accompanied her lovely voice-like violin- 
playing, and felt that at a moment’s relaxa- 
tion of my long-tried self-repression I 
should be leading her away from the con- 
certo before us into that spell-air, with all 
its results : that was a difficult moment. 
And when Lord St. Denys, who himself 
knew something of music, said to me 
afterwards in the smoking-room, “You 
were hardly in your usual form to-night, 
old man ; a trifle wooden and unfeeling, 
eh ? ” I could only turn it off as lightly as 
I might, and secretly pour out thanks that 
I had been “ kept from the evil.” 

The next day I went to see Mr. , 

lOI 


Nephele" 

the Concert-Director, and arranged with 
him that the sonata should be brought 
out at his concert in February, and played 
by one of the first violinists of the day. 

Lord St. Denys had successfully passed 
his examination, and taken his degree ; 
and the wedding was also to take place in 
February, just a week after this concert. 
The Delisles were Roman Catholics, and 
there was to be a double ceremony, at a 
Roman Catholic church as well as an 
English one. And as the wedding was to 
take place in London, both Lord St. Denys 
and Nephele would be there at the time 
of the concert, and both declared they 
wouldn’t miss it for anything. 

So, with all arrangements made, and 
with my feelings in a curious ferment, 
half of sick distaste of life, half of excite- 
ment and interest in the coming perform- 
ance of my music, I went quietly home 
for the Christmas vacation. 


102 


Nephele^ 


CHAPTER X. 

February came, and the date of the 
concert drew near. I went up to London 
to stay with friends, and the Director 
arranged for me to hear the rehearsal of 
my sonata. 

It was very wonderful to hear that music 
again, so beautifully performed ; but deeply 
as it moved me, it brought, thus heard, no 
faintest recurrence of the old effect on my 
spirit. 

The violinist complimented me very 
highly, and said it was a treat to find a 
modern piece of music deserving, and re- 
quiring, such serious study, and claiming 
all the feeling of the violin and of the 
violinist. 

The Director had spoken of the sonata 
to some of the great musicians, and dear 

old Dr. of Oxford had also made its 

praises known, so that I found there was a 


Nephele 

certain amount of anticipation and excite- 
ment about it among musical people ; and 
that I myself was treated with some dis- 
tinction by the few that I already knew, or 
now met at the Director’s. 

The fateful evening— how fateful it was 
to be I did not dream — came at last. 

Lord St. Denys’ people, and Nephele’s, 
were all coming to hear the sonata, and I 
was to meet them at the Concert Hall, 
where a number of seats had been taken 
for the party in one of the front rows. 

I went down there somewhat early, in a 
fever of excitement ; and when I got out 
of my cab at the entrance, one of the 
attendants whom I had seen at the re- 
hearsal, and who therefore knew me, came 
up at once to me. 

“ Would you please to come to Mr. ’s 

room at once, sir.” 

I followed, in some apprehension, owing 
to the man’s manner. 

“Is anything the matter?” I asked him. 

“ Mr. will tell you, sir,” he answered, 

and almost immediately I found myself 
ushered into the Director’s room, where 

104 


Nephele^ 

he was walking up and down, in great 
excitement, talking earnestly with two or 
three other men. 

“ Oh, Mr. Gerard,” he began, “ I’ve 
very bad news for you. Read this 
note!” 

He tossed me an open note across the 
table. I read it, and saw that it was from 
the violinist who was to play my sonata, 
expressing deep regret at being unable to 
fulfil his engagement. He had been, he 
said, most foolishly, skating, and had fallen 
and sprained his bowing arm. The doctor 
said that it was impossible, apart from the 
pain, for him to risk using it, as it might 
ruin his playing for life. He was full of 
profound regrets, etc., etc. 

It was a great blow to me. I felt sud- 
denly, what I had hardly realized before, 
how much this performance meant to me, 
how much I had set upon it. 

I made an effort, however, and mastered 
myself — self-control had become my 
habitual law of living. 

“ Well, one omission will not spoil your 
concert,” I managed to say, “ and fortu- 


Nephele^ 

nately, that was the only number that 
Herr was to play in.” 

“ It will spoil it very much indeed,” he 
replied. “ It’s robbing it of its chief attrac- 
tion— your sonata. I am very much upset 
about it. Scores and scores of people are 
coming to hear it ; and your music is so 
plaguey difficult (forgive me!) that no one 
else that I can get could read it at 
sight.” 

There was nothing more to be said. I 
left the room, and made my way to the 
concert room. I found my party arrived, 
and walked to my place next to St. Denys. 
He looked up and saw at once that some- 
thing was the matter. 

“ Hullo,” he said ; “what’sup? Nothing 
wrong ? ” 

I shortly explained the case in a low 
tone, which only Nephele, who was next 
him, and who leant over to listen, heard. 

Her eyes were full of sympathy. 

“ Oh, I am sorry,” said Lord St. Denys. 
“ Can no one else play it?” 

“ No,” I said ; “ the Director says it’s 
too ‘ plaguey difficult.’ ” 

io6 


Nephele 

There was a pause of a minute, and then 
Nephele said in a low lone — 

“Are you very much disappointed, Mr. 
Gerard?” 

I looked up at her. I could not trust 
myself to speak. I felt my eyes were wet 
at the sudden shock of such perfect sym- 
pathy as her voice expressed. 

She saw how it was, and went on — 

“ Would the Director let me play it ? I 
think I could.” 

“ By Jove, Nephele, that’s agrand idea ! ” 
cried Lord St. Denys. “ You are a brick! ” 

“ Shouldn’t you mind ? ” I said, hardly 
audibly. 

“ No,” she said. “ I’m used to playing 
before people.” 

“ I didn’t mean that,” I said, but my 
voice was inaudible, even to myself, and I 
don’t think she heard. 

Lord St. Denys was eager for me to go 
off at once to the Director ; and I went. 

I found him still there with his three 
friends, and I told him that I knew a lady 
who would play the sonata. 

“ A lady ? ” he said. “ A professional ?” 


NepJiele^ 

“ No ; an amateur.” 

“ Oh, my dear fellow, Fm afraid it’s 
impossible. I can’t put amateur playing, 
however good, before the sort of audience 
we shall have to-night ; it’s out of the ques- 
tion.” 

I felt hot, but answered quietly — 

“The lady in question is better than 
most professionals I have ever heard.” 

“ Who is she ? ” he asked. 

“ Miss Nephele^ Delisle.” 

“ Who ? ” cried one of the other men in 
the room, a spectacled German. “Who 
did you say ? ” 

“ Miss Nephele Delisle.” 

“ Ach ! ” he cried, in great excitement, 
“ she is an angel of the orchestra over 
which St. Gabriel wields his baton! I 

heard her lately when I was at Lord ’s, 

and I was ravished. My friend,” he went 
on, laying a large hand on the Director’s 
shoulder, “ your misfortune will prove a 
blessing in disguise if you can get Miss 
Delisle to play to all your audience there. 
They will say that you have kept the good 
wine till the last.” 


io8 


Nephele^ 

The Director was a hard business man, 
used to regard most second-hand fame 
with due incredulity. But the German 
critic was a voice of European authority. 
He sprang from the table. 

“ Is Miss Delisle here in the audience ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, ‘‘ with the Earl of Beau- 
repaire’s party. She is fiancee to Lord St. 
Denys.” 

He was duly impressed, as I meant him 
to be. 

“ Would you take me to be introduced 
to her?” 

“ Certainly,” I said. 

It was time to begin the concert, but the 
Director paid no heed to the impatient 
stampings in the gallery and back rows, but 
followed me to where Nephele^ was sitting. 

He was evidently startled by her beauty. 
He made her a low bow, and sitting in my 
vacant seat, he spoke hurriedly to her. 
He said how kind it was of her to offer to 

play, repeated what Herr had said of 

her playing, and declared he should be 
eternally grateful to her for coming to the 

109 


rescue. 


Nephele 

“ Can I send for your violin?” he said. 
“The sonata does not come in till the 
second part, so there’s plenty of time.” 

Now, one thing I knew of Nephele was 
that she never, if she could help it, let any 
human being but herself touch her violin, 
either in its case or out of it. Once she 
had let me carry it for her, saying that I 
was almost the only man who had ever 
been thought worthy of doing so. 

I saw her look troubled, and hastily said — 

“ May I go ? I am very careful ! ” 

She turned grateful eyes on me. 

“ Thank you very much. I had rather 
it was some one I know. It is a precious 
friend, as well as a priceless instrument, 
you see,” she said apologetically to the 
Director. 

She scribbled a line on a leaf of her pro- 
gramme, for my authority, tore it off, and 
gave it to me. I left the Hall quickly, 
hailed the first cab I saw, and drove 
rapidly to the Delisles’ house, where I had 
no difficulty in getting the instrument. 

On the way back I began to reflect. 

What did it all mean ? Where was it all 
no 


Nephele^ 

leading to ? Nephele had never, to my 
knowledge, played this air before except 
when I was playing too. Would her play- 
ing it have the same magic effect as my 
own? A sudden throb — half of terror, 
half of hope — took me, and then the guilty 
longing, “Would God I were going to play 
with her ! ” This startled me. Was this 
the end of my self-effacement, of my 
trained self-sacrifice ? No. Let Nephele 
play the air ! I felt that, so long as I was 
not playing with her, I should retain 
enough control over my own spirit to 
resist and to overcome. This, I thought, 
in an ascetic ecstasy, this is to be the final 
proof, the hardest test of all. While her 
wondrous hands are lending that music 
such an inspired tenderness that all others 
sit as spellbound, I alone must remain 
unmoved, and hear as though I heard not, 
keeping watch and ward over my own 
soul, lest if for a moment I let it “ wander 
in starry ways,” the spell-like power over- 
come me, and my spirit fly forth in that 
mysterious way of old to talk to her spirit, 
and claim and win her inmost love. 


Nephele'^ 

Thank God,” my thought ended aloud, 
“ thank God, I am not going to accompany 
her ! ” and as I breathed this ejaculation 
I arrived at the Concert Hall. 

I found that the first part of the con- 
cert was just over. There was an interval 
of ten minutes, then the second part 
would begin with a song, and then came 
the sonata. 

I found a party talking in the foyer ^ con- 
sisting of Nephele^ her brother. Lord St. 
Denys, and the Director, also the German 
critic. 

“Ah, here is Mr. Gerard himself,” said 
the Director as I joined them. “Just in 
time. Shall you feel equal to accompany- 
ing your own sonata ?” 

“I?” I said, startled. “Impossible!” 

“Why?” he asked, surprised. “You 
must be well used to playing in public.” 

“Oh yes. It isn’t that. I’m not 
nervous.” 

“The fact is,” he continued, “that the 

man who has rehearsed it with Herr 

is at present incapable. He is a brilliant 
pianist, but he has a weakness that many 

II2 


Nephele^ 

brilliant people have ; and having heard 

that Herr was not coming, I suppose 

he thought he wouldn’t be wanted, and 
when I sent to him he came simply drunk. 
You know what your music is like. I can 
get it played at sight after a fashion, but it 
will be doing a cruel injustice to Miss 
Delisle’s playing.” 

Ah ! the supreme test of my endurance 
had come in a different form, in a tenfold 
harder form, than that I had pictured. I 
ought then, at that last hour, to have set 
my face like a flint and said No, I would 
not play ; even at the risk of offending 
every one, Nephele included — of being 
thought mad, perhaps. But I hesitated ; 
and Lord St. Denys, in his frank impetu- 
ous way, burst out — 

“ Nonsense, my dear old man ! of course 
you’ll play ! It would be absurd not to. 
Nephele", ask him to, and then he can’t 
refuse ! ” 

The words of my vow flashed across me. 
Had I not sworn never to play this music 
unless Nephele asked me? What — what — 

would she say? 

8 113 


Nephele* 

Alas ! she had none of the pride, mis- 
named modesty, that would have made 
many women think it was stooping too 
low to ask in this way. 

Quietly, in a tranquil, sober tone, she 
said — 

“If it is left to me, I think it w^ould be 
a great pity to spoil the sonata now. Will 
you not play it, Mr. Gerard?” 

“Yes, I will,” I said, almost inaudibly. 

“That’s capital,” said the Director, and 
a moment later, through the open door, 
we heard him announcing from the plat- 
form that unfortunately Herr had 

sprained his arm, but by great good luck 
a young lady, well known to many present 
as one of the most brilliant amateurs of 
the day, Miss Nephele Delisle, knew the 
sonata, and had consented to play it ; and 
he was also sure the audience would be 
glad to hear that the gifted composer him- 
self had been persuaded to take the piano 
part. 

There was a good deal of applause at 
this, but I hardly heard it. I felt as a 
seaman in the Maelstrom vortex feels. 

II4 


Nephele^ 

All directing power was taken out of my 
hands. I was helpless in the toss and 
whirl of circumstance. Whither was I 
being carried by it ? To joy unutterable ? 
to torment unending? I knew not. Yet 
to something that had — from the infinite 
beginning of things — the inevitable neces- 
sity to be. 

I was roused by Nephele saying — 
“Come, Mr. Gerard, the song is over. 
It is our turn.” 

We stepped together onto the platform. 


Nephele^ 


CHAPTER XI. 

“You must lead me on,” she said. 

I took her fingers lightly in mine, and 
led her forward to make her bow to the 
audience. 

There was a moment’s startled silence 
— a “ sensation,” as the papers say — then a 
loud and sudden applause ; for she looked 
very beautiful. Clad in perfect white, 
with a little gold embroidery on train and 
bodice, and a white flower in her hair, her 
regal head held straight and noble, a little 
touch of excitement in her cheeks and 
eyes, she stood tall and graceful and gen- 
tle-looking as an angel of God. 

She was of a certain rare and wonder- 
ful beauty, which I must linger a moment 
to describe, as best words may. As every 
one knows, the Southern beauty of dark 
eyes and dark hair is usually the more 
mastering and impressive, while the North- 


Nephele” 

ern beauty of lighter hues is the more 
artistically lovely. But now and again, 
rare as the centennial aloe-bloom, is seen 
a face, fair as the Orient dayspring in 
golden hair and heaven-blue eyes, yet full 
also of the haunting wistfulness that usu- 
ally looks out at us from the depths of 
dark-brown eyes shining under dark- 
brown tresses. 

I know not if my words will to others 
recall other faces. In one face only have 
I who try to describe it beheld this name- 
less wonderful charm. 

I opened the sonata on the music-rest 
before her, sat down to the piano, and 
softly played a ripple of music round and 
round the four violin notes, to give her 
the time to tune her strings, for she had 
had no chance before ; and meanwhile I 
looked about. 

Below me, like a flower-bed, glowed 
and shone and shimmered the great floor 
of faces and dresses, giving me an inde- 
scribable and unwonted realization of my 
own existence. I, even I, was alive, now, 

here, at this moment, set to speak with the 
117 


Nephele^ 

playing of my hands and the music of my 
soul to all these other living human souls. 
I felt them to be indeed “a cloud of wit- 
nesses/’ exalting every movement of mine, 
every note I touched, every sound I 
sounded, to some mysterious importance, 
vast and world-concerning. 

There were some Royalties present, 
lately married ; and out of compliment to 
them the hall was beautifully decorated, 
and the stage half-covered with palms 
and white flowers. There was a scent of 
exotic blossoms all about me. Every 
sense was thrilled and heightened by the 
sight, the scent, the sound, as my fingers 
swept the keys of the melodious piano. 

And I turned to Nephele to see if she 
was ready. What — was some apprehen- 
sion, some realization, coming to her — too 
late ? There was a look on her face I had 
not seen before. Was it fear ? Was it, 
could it be, delight, or the dream of de- 
light ? I could not say. Only I thought 
that in her face I saw as in a mirror the 
exact but fainter reflex of my own confused 
and tangled feelings. 

ii8 


Nephele^ 

One liquid look she turned on me as 
she signed her readiness to begin, one 
look only ; but in that look a new heaven 
and a new earth were born for me. It 
was not the look of love. (That I should 
need even to write this denial ! ) It was 
not of any named or namable feeling; 
but it was a look out of her very soul. 
She herself — not her brain, not her 
thoughts, not her feelings, not her fancies 
— but her very Self, for one moment 
looked at me. And in that moment all 
my doubts and dread and hesitation had 
vanished utterly. 

This has to be ! (I said to m^^self). Her 
spirit and mine have, after all this long 
repugnance and struggle, at last come to 
a point when resistance is over. Now, 
here, the consummation of communion 
has to be. Let it be ! Whatever may 
come after, let this be ! Let me speak to 
her, spirit to spirit, as of old, now for the last 
time — nay, now for the first time in perfect 
fulness of speech ! In these few moments 
of measurable time there lies for me and 
for her a life-time long and full, and the 


Nephele" 

evolving drama of two souls to be made as 
one. Love may be in it — Pain may be in 
it — Death may be in it. Let them be ! 
And the end, though it be distant now 
but half the dial-circle, shall be then, for 
us, as the end of Eternity. Let it be ! 

And in an ecstasy— as if I was verily 
stepping through the gate that led into a 
new life and a Dante-world of Purgatory 
or Paradise — I began to play. 

Yes — there was no change, no loss. 
The air had the same spirit-spell as before. 
As I played it first, before the violin took 
it up, I seemed to be floating in a dream- 
river of bodiless sensation, and calling to 
her spirit on the bank to come, come, and 
join me. 

And she heard ; and the violin took up 
the air, and, lo, her spirit had joined me ; 
and there were little undertones of softest 
wailing reproach as our spirits first spoke 
together— what words can give them ? It 
was as though \Ve each cried to the other, 
Why this long time ? why this long part- 
ing ? why this misunderstanding ? And 
120 


Nephele^ 

then the reproaches melted into sweetest, 
most intimate felicity of perfect reconcili- 
ation. We were together for all time. 
As the soul and body are reunited in 
Blake’s picture, so we were together. 

Was this all ? All ! nay, this was but 
the beginning. All the inmost recesses 
of thought and consciousness remained to 
be laid bare by each to each, till nothing 
that the one knew or felt or thought was 
alien to the other’s mind and heart and 
memory. All my resolve, all my self-re- 
pression, my days of self-torture, my 
nights of aching and agony, all had to be 
told her in wordless wonderful unfold- 
ings. All her tremblings, her restraints, 
her love for her plighted lover, her resist- 
ance to the realization of a greater love, 
all these I grew to understand, yet so that 
to phrase it in language is impossible. It 
was not in language — not in thought even 
— that I understood her, or she me ; and 
what I now write down is but the impres- 
sion of that time translated into the mis- 
interpreting medium of thought and 
language. Had we ceased our playing 

I2I 


Nephele" 

that moment she could not have said what 
had been my feelings, nor I what had 
been hers. There were no dates, no 
categories, no laws of logic, none of the 
moulding lines of human thought, in 
our converse. Only, we knew one an- 
other — knew, as never souls out of Heaven 
have known each other before. And for 
long days, as it seemed, we lived in the 
daily deepening joy of growing intimacy, 
even as I had seemed to live with the un- 
named girl-spirit, when first this air came 
to me in the school chapel long ago. 

Yet blissful as this intimacy was, full of 
continuous satisfactions, rising one after 
the other as each remaining nucleus of 
strangerhood melted, as little clouds melt 
in the moonlight ; yet through all, to my 
hungering soul there was some lack : some 
craving I felt that would not be satisfied. 
And in some wonderful way I knew what 
this thing that I hungered for, and that 
came not yet, was. For while my inner- 
most self soul lived this life of rapture, 
the dry-eyed brain and human reason in 

me stood by, as it were, as a mere specta- 
122 


Nephel^ 

tor, a witness of what was taking place, 
though without power to help or hinder. 
And so I knew, in the brain and reason, 
that the thing I was waiting for was Love 
— the Master-love to unite forever our 
two spirits. And I knew that in the music 
I had written. Love had place ; that there 
the growing harmony of the two spirits 
ended in the perfect union of love. And 
I watched till love should come. 

Not without struggle it came, not with- 
out difficulty, not without pain. For 
there came a moment in our spirit-com- 
munion when the last veil that remained 
between us had to be torn away, when I 
had, in the un-languaged spirit way, to con- 
fess to this sister-spirit that met with mine 
freely and intimately as twin-brother with 
twin-sister, that I loved her with a deeper 
and more eternal love than the birth-love ; 
and to challenge her to search her own 
heart, and say if she loved me not with the 
same. And yet to do so filled me with 
pain, for I knew that she loved her 
plighted lover with a true woman’s love ; 

and that to bid her, as I must bid her, to 
123 


Nephele^ 

search diligently if there were not ampler 
unfilled chambers in her heart, where a 
greater, more controlling love was to rule, 
was to put her to torture of conscience, 
and torment of feeling, and tearing of the 
very heart-fibres in twain. 

And as the music grew troubled and 
more troubled under the shadow of this 
looming dark necessity, I felt as if the 
nearest languageable likeness to this dread 
stage of our soul-communion should be 
the going down, hand in hand, of two af- 
frighted children to some shuddering cave 
of horror, to ask of witch or wizard of some 
dreaded future that lay before them. 
Black air was about us, and the darkness 
of no natural night, and the wailing of 
miserable winds ; while fearful forms, in 
mocking likeness of the desired dead, rose 
and menaced and passed. 

The music had now lost all its calm 
and all its melodic delight, and was full 
of moans and cries, and the sense of 
fierce fightings between dearest friends, of 
woundings more painful to those that 

gave than to those that took them. 

124 


Nephele^ 

And still, side by side, tone answering 
to tone, note timed perfectly with note, 
we kept on our way .together through this 
valley of the shadow. Till suddenly, with 
a crash as of Sinai thunder, the struggle 
was over, and the awaited answer, for 
good or for evil, forever and ever and ever, 
was given and accepted. And the answer 
was the confession of Love. 

She loved me, yes, even as I loved her. 
The last husk of disunion was stripped and 
shrivelled. We had fought hard to our 
utmost of strength to be allowed to walk 
on still in the twilight, shunning the daz- 
zling daylight that Love had prepared for 
us to walk in ; but the Master had con- 
quered, and now there was nothing for us 
but to go in with him, out of the dark lands 
of storm and anguish and bleak desolation, 
into his Eden of everlasting joy. 

And the music soared and sang till it 
swelled to a triumphal marriage-march. 
The wedding-hour of our souls was come ; 
and to my on-looking Reason there seemed 
an ordained fitness in the white flowers 

around us, the exotic scents, the brilliant 
125 


Nephele^ 

crowd of gazers. Then, there, without 
speech, without language, spirit to spirit 
plighted everlasting troth, and soul to soul 
was knit in bonds more indissoluble than 
the chain that binds the stars to their 
courses. And a great happiness, which 
human words of joy can no more present 
than a pictured sun can give sunshine, 
surged and overwhelmed us. The waves 
of a deep peace closed over us, as the 
stream closes over water-creatures returned 
to the water. Our souls were as one soul, 
our thoughts as one thought, our wills as 
one will. All that I knew of my own 
heart I knew of hers also. The utter con- 
summation, the absolute merged oneness, 
was completed, and a new life of the one 
soul that had been two was beginning. 

And now there happened a great marvel. 
For the written music here came to its 
close. The end which I had imagined, 
and which I had tried to write down in the 
score, was the end of completed union ; 
but, as I said before, I had not been suc- 
cessful in the close. There was still a 
want of finality — a sense of unsatisfaction, 


Nephele^ 

as if the end was not yet. And why this 
was so I now understood. The goal of 
completed union to which our spirits had 
attained was not the end, but rather the 
beginning — the opening morning of a new 
unimaginable life. 

Yet, as the written music stopped there, 
my Reason, the onlooker, fell to wonder- 
ing what would happen next. Would our 
playing cease when the score ended, and 
break off this Elysian life of joy at its very 
beginning, as a dream is broken wh^n the 
sleeper wakes ? And if so, what life could 
hereafter be endurable for her and for me ? 
If parted, should not our torn hearts bleed 
to death? If together, how should we 
answer the upbraidings of conscience ? 

And even as I wondered thus, I was 
conscious that others also were expecting 
the end. The Director and his friends 
from the wings of the stage. Lord St. Denys 
in the front row beneath us, these at least 
knew that the score was nearing its close, 
and were preparing, I could feel, for a 
great applause. 

But no, the end was not to be yet ! For 
127 


Nephele^ 

when the music should have stopped, my 
hands, as if without my will, went on play- 
ing, and the violin notes, without break 
or change or moment’s hesitation, con- 
tinued in harmony as perfect as before. 

I could feel the startled astonishment 
of those few of the audience who knew 
the music as it was scored ; and I felt in 
my own breast a strange solemn wonder, 
almost dread, to know what new develop- 
ment of dream-life and spirit-love lay be- 
fore us. 

And now I knew surely what I had 
guessed before, that this music, published 
to the world as mine, was not mine more 
than it was Nephele’s, nor yet hers more 
than it was mine. For just as it had hap- 
pened before, that this air only came to 
me through the realization of her presence 
and influence, so now I found it was not 
I who was leading and she who was fol- 
lowing my lead, but that we were playing, 
as one player, what neither of us alone 
knew beforehand nor awaited, both follow- 
ing together some inmost instinct that we 

shared but could not divide. 

128 


Nephele* 

We were, as it seemed, exploring to- 
gether a new-found Paradise, strange, im- 
mortal, undescribed. All the ecstasy of 
April woodlands, of June midnights, of 
wide sunlit prospects, all that ever lends 
wings to the human soul, or loosens it 
awhile from its frightened clinging to time 
and the solid earth, to soar singing to the 
gates of Eternity — all this we found in the 
music that came to us. And ever in one- 
ness of emotion our spirits swept on to 
new gains of insight and exhilaration, 
treading unseen pathways, and drinking 
such joy as never reaches the human 
spirit through the clogged pores of the 
five physical senses. 

This, I think — nay, do I not know it ? — 
was the supreme moment of my life. 
Never before, never since, has my soul 
touched such heights of ecstasy. Yet so 
full, so satisfying was the joy, that it could 
leave no sting of regret, no insatiable thirst 
for its return. Having lived that moment 
— for I think that it lasted but a moment, 
though we lived an eternity while it lasted 
— I can say serenely “ I have lived.” All 

9 129 


Nephele' 

lower joys are indistinguishable from sor- 
rows, to a soul that has been in such a 
Heaven. The mere memory of it tran- 
scends all pleasure and deadens all pain, 
and is a master current in my life, that 
still continues. 

And I wondered if this was the end, if 
the music would melt and fade and die in 
pure rapture. But even while I was thus 
wondering, I knew of a coming change. 
A note of terror was muttering and grow- 
ing louder and shriller in the midst of the 
psalm of perfected life ; and, swiftly as an 
oncoming storm, it swelled and swelled, 
till all the music was turned to wild 
lamentable confusion. 

What was this that could break up the 
peace of Paradise? What was this that 
could affright two souls made one in the 
union of ineffable love ? I knew ! I knew ! 
It was the Past, with its terrible trumpet- 
tongued recall — ^Too late ! Too late ! To 
both of us, as our spirits clung together 
in inviolable union, sounded this doom — 
Too late ! and from both of us came 
back the bitter hopeless cry — Oh, had 

130 


Nephele 

we known before ! Oh, had we known 
before ! 

And then there came a new agony in 
the music that we were living together, a 
new strife, insupportable, tearing the very 
vital soul in twain. It was the strife be- 
tween Conscience crying of Honor and 
Duty and plighted Faith : and Nature, 
maintaining the inalienable right of her 
supreme overriding dominion. And herein 
lay the terror, the intolerable anguish, of 
this struggle : that both the striving princi- 
ples claimed to speak with the voice of 
God, and echoed with the thunder-menace 
of God’s own laws. The law of Conscience 
and the law of Nature were at fiercest 
strife. Nature cried — “These are my chil- 
dren, meant from the everlasting begin- 
nings of destiny to be thus joined in one ; 
each imperfect alone, together, most perfect 
of created lives.” Conscience cried — “The 
Past is irrevocable : the dues of honor 
pledged must be paid : one life blighted, 
and faith extinguished by a deed of un- 
faith, countervails all perfection.” 

Fiercer and more unendurable grew the 


Nephele* 

struggle. Our spirits clung together, while 
the force as of a hundred tearing hands 
sought to separate them. And through 
all the agony, to be together in suffering 
seemed happiness only less than to be 
together in joy. 

What the wild music we were playing 
sounded like to other ears, I cannot guess. 
To us it was life itself at its utmost possi- 
ble tension. And presently I knew — she 
knowing in my knowing — that the decision 
was nearing to be made for us or by us — the 
decision which, whatever way it fell, could 
bring nothing but anguish and inextin- 
guishable woe. It was nearing, nearing — 
separation forever, and all life broken and 
hopeless ; or union forever, and the ever- 
lasting whirling in the flamewind of hell. 

But even as despondency grew to de- 
spair at such inevitability of misery, I 
began to hear a new tone in the music, 
the increasing roar of an unlooked-for 
doom, of a doom that might be terrible, 
yet which should come welcome as an 
Angel of deliverance. 

And now the likeness seemed this: that 
132 


Nephele^ 

we were floating together down a broad 
and rapid stream, borne irresistibly on to 
the unseen roaring waterfall. Swifter and 
swifter raced the current, closer and closer 
we clung as we neared the peril, louder 
and louder rose the thunders of the in- 
evitable fall, thrown, in masses mightier 
than Atlantic billows, over fathomless 
precipices of footless rock. 

What was this doom that should save us 
from the awful choice, this destruction 
that was to be salvation, I knew not, 
guessed not. Nor, for all the awful terror 
of it, had I any fear, had she any fear, 
even to that last moment when the glassy 
water-slope slipped from under us, and 
down — down — we were falling — falling — 
together 

Her fingers failed, and mine, at the same 
note. For one moment the cessation of 
the music was as the waking from a dream. 
By one instantaneous glimpse, as in a 
lightning flash between two blacknesses, 
I knew that I was falling in a faint upon 
the keyboard, and that Nephele was 
swooning also— and then I knew no more. 

133 


Nephele^ 


CHAPTER XII, 

What actually happened I must tell 
from the account of others. I was plunged 
into a merciful blackness of oblivion and 
perfect unconsciousness, and knew nothing 
of it till long after. 

Most of the daily papers had some 
account of the performance, and detailed 
the occurrence that ended it. I will quote 
—omitting the technical description of the 
music — from one of the best accounts, 
which must, I fancy, have been either 
inspired by the Director, or written by 
one of his friends who had been present. 

. . . “The audience listened spellbound, 
so beautiful was the music, so perfect the 
rendering. At the same time there was 
an emotional power in the music that 
came in time to be felt by the listeners as 
a positive tension of the nerves, and those 

who had been privileged to see the score 
134 


Nephele^ 

were feeling something very like relief to 
know that it was nearing the end, when 
they were astonished by a strange and 
almost inexplicable occurrence. Instead 
of ceasing when the written score ended, 
both the violinist and the pianist went on 
without a break into a new and most 
beautiful passage, of such supreme delight 
that all strain was forgotten, and pure en- 
joyment took its place. We understand 
that Miss Delisle had never seen the score 
till that night, and if so it is impossible to 
speak too enthusiastically of the way in 
which she took up the hints given by the 
piano part, and followed out the variations 
note by note in perfect accord with Mr. 
Gerard’s improvisation. It was a feat that 
we should have declared beforehand to be 
absolutely impossible even to the greatest 
living musicians. The tax upon attention, 
and every other power of mind and body, 
must have been tremendous, and in fact it 
was too great and too prolonged. For 
during what we imagine was to have been 
the finale, and while the music was work- 
ing up to a close of the most marvellous 
135 


Nephele^ 

interest and anticipation, and the audience 
was listening with actually breathless sus- 
pense, Miss Delisle was suddenly observed 
to sway and totter and fall in a dead faint. 
Lord St. Denys and others sprang upon 
the platform in a moment, and it was then 
noticed that Mr. Gerard too had fainted 
on his seat at the piano. There was a 
good deal of sympathetic interest evinced 
by the audience, and much comment was 
made upon the curious simultaneity of the 
fainting fit v/hich had prostrated the two 
gifted performers. No doubt the heat of 
the Hall had much to do with it. Our 
architects are still all at sea as to ventilat- 
ing a large building, and it is possible that 
some unconscious person, opening a door 
at some distance, had driven a gust of 
over-heated and de-oxidized air on to the 
stage. But, as we observed before, the 
physical tension of such a brilliant tour- 
de-force must have been tremendous, and 
would render the highly-strained nerves 
of the performers unusually sensitive to un- 
toward influences of exhalation or pressure. 
The two unfortunate victims, who had 


Nephele^ 

but a minute before been enchaining the 
vast audience, were now conveyed uncon- 
scious out of the Hall, while, after a brief 
interval, the concert proceeded to its con- 
clusion. No doubt Mr. Gerard’s sonata 
will be heard very soon again, and the 
score published, when we shall hope to 
give a longer and more detailed account 
of this very beautiful production.” 

This account appeared in next day’s 
paper, but it was many days before I saw 
or was able to read it. The friends at 
whose house I was staying got me home 
as quickly and gently as they could ; but I 
have no recollection of that, or of anything 
but broken and fitful moments of con- 
sciousness, and long, interminable dreams, 
alternating between happiness and pain 
with almost monotonous regularity, as if 
huge succeeding waves with mountainous 
crests and infinite abysses now lifted me 
up to Heaven and now lowered me down 
to Hell. And always, in dreams or waking 
moments, I had the feeling of being torn 
and bleeding— of being a half-creature 
whose other half had been violently rent 

137 


Nephele^ 

away ; so that I dimly remember wonder- 
ing, in the silly-sensible way of dreams, 
whether my half would live, or the other, 
or perhaps neither. 

Actually, I was living through an attack 
of brain-fever, and for a fortnight I lay in 
extreme and dangerous illness, ministered 
to, as I knew afterwards, most gently, most 
tenderly, most kindly, and with trained 
nurses for day and night. At last it was 
seen that a crisis was approaching — some 
change for better or for worse, possibly for 
the worst, was nearing ; and this came in 
a strange and unexpected way. 

It was at night, the whole house was 
asleep, and the night nurse was dozing be- 
tween the times of necessary ministration, 
when every one in the house was wakened 
by the sound of music. Some one in the 
darkened drawing-room was playing on the 
piano. 

How I had made my way there I do 
not know ; but I remember very clearly 
the rest — how I found my fingers on the 
yielding keys, and began, will-lessly, to 
play the Nephele"" air. Feebly I played it, 


Nephele^ 

for I was very weak, but truly and accu- 
rately. And then the old sensation came 
over me again, and once more I was in 
close intimate communion with my sweet 
sister-spirit. And I knew that we were 
ending the music as we had left it in the 
Concert Hall, that the broken-off passage 
had passed into the recurrence of the first 
air, with new harmonies and a new mean- 
ing. The crash, the fall, the terror was 
over, and only remained the quiet lapse to 
the close. 

Ah, how sweet, how sweet was that 
time ! Long it seemed, and yet it was a 
very few minutes. The broken was united 
again, the torn, the wounded, the bleeding 
was made whole: our spirits were knit 
once more in unity as of a single living 
soul, and together we lapsed gently, gently 
to the end. 

And I knew now what the end was. It 
was Death— “ Death as the friend,’' the 
friendliest, the gentlest, solving for us in 
peace the terrible agonizing dilemma 
which had seemed so hopeless, so inevi- 
table. And with a sense of sunshine, and 
139 


Nepliele^ 

eternal flowers, and angel smiles, softly I 
played the closing chord. 

Alas ! our physical natures had not that 
intimate unity which our spirits had ! I 
knew not then that the death that we 
reached, the friendly delivering death, 
came not to both of us — came to Nephele 
— came not to me. The one was taken, 
the other left. Our spirits had passed 
together to — even, I thought, through — 
the gate of death, all the pain and all the 
terror swallowed up in the joy of union 
and of deliverance from the dreaded future. 
It is easy to understand that there was 
some greater frailty of constitution in the 
girl-nature or greater robustness in the 
man ; easy to understand that the laws of 
physical nature — resistless while flesh is 
flesh — decided that difference of vital 
power, which parted our spirits even 
within the doors of Bliss, when they 
seemed joined, inseparable, forever and 
ever. 

I knew not this at the time. With the 
last note of the music unconsciousness fell 

upon me. But in the morning, when the 
140 


Nephele* 

rest of the world awoke, I woke too, as I 
had not waked for many mornings, weak, 
tired, but with clear eyes and unstopped 
ears for the sunlight and the flowers in the 
room, and the twittering of birds in the 
trees outside, and with unclouded brain to 
realize, with certainty as of revealed truth, 
that Nephele^ was dead. 

Yet, strange to say, I felt no poignant 
sorrow, no sudden stabbing pain, to cause 
me to turn my face to the wall and cry — 
Would God that I had died too ! Rather, 
a numb opiate-like peace lay on my spirit. 
I had lived my life : I had found the love- 
liest soul that ever lived outside the courts 
of Heaven, and with her had tasted love 
such as no mortal ever knew before : I 
had parted from her in rapturous farewell 
at the very gate of Heaven : the rest of 
life, long or little, quiet or stormy, could 
have nothing in it to wash out the past, 
nothing to separate, to annoy, to perplex. 
And in this peace I began to recover. 

For that had been truly the crisis of my 
illness, as it had of Nephele— a crisis end- 
ing for me in one way, for her in another. 


Nephele" 

When I was strong enough to be told, I 
learned what had taken place that night. 
How most of the household had come 
down, half in awe, to find out what meant 
this strange music playing in the dark 
room. How the nurse — who was an 
experienced and sagacious woman — had 
stopped those who would have stayed my 
playing, and softly wrapped me, as I sat at 
the piano, in warm folds of woollen wraps, 
and whispered to the rest to let be. “ Who 
can tell,” she said, “ if this may recall him 
to life ? The ‘ ruling passion ’ has done 
such a thing before now.” 

And so, with one dim light in the 
darkened room, they watched and listened. 
It was but for a few minutes. None there 
were musicians skilled enough to know 
much of what I played; but all were 
penetrated with the blissful angelic sweet- 
ness and breathing heavenly peace of the 
music, as it rose and sank, and sank, and 
died away ; till with the last note I slipped 
down in the chair, lapsed again into 
unconsciousness, and they bore me off 
again to my room. 


142 


Nephele^ 

The nurse watched by me with ceaseless 
care during the rest of the night, and as 
the morning came she perceived that 
the crisis was over, and that I was to 
live. 

Of my days of convalescence there is 
nothing much to say that bears on the 
story I have set myself to tell. But as 
strength returned, interest in things and 
people grew stronger, and I found myself 
wondering as to the other actors in the 
drama. None had told me Nephele* was 
dead — none had mentioned her name. 
The first person my friends spoke of to 
me, when they found I wished to know 
what was going on in the world, was Lord 
St. Denys. He had come daily to inquire 
for me, and implored to be allowed to see 
me ; but the doctor’s orders were strict, 
and even he had to be refused. He had 
sent flowers that I could not see or smell, 
and fruit that I could not eat, and my 
eyes filled with tears as I heard of all his 
acts and thoughts of friendliness. 

And then the ghost of a feeble con- 
science awoke, and accused me of having 
143 


Nephele"" 

been unworthy, of having been traitor to 
my friend ; and, do what I would, I could 
not still this voice. Yet some other voice 
in me protested that the accusation was 
unjust ; that I had fought a good fight, and 
had kept faith ; that all that had taken 
place was in spite of me, was no act of my 
own ; and that in this spirit-communion 
with her who was to have been my friend’s 
wife, I, and she also, had owned to the full 
the claims of honor and of plighted faith ; 
and that death had come to save us all 
from a terrible tangle of antagonizing love 
and duty and friendship. 

And then I began to wonder — Did he 
know anything ? Did he guess anything ? 
What had he, and others, thought of the 
performance, of its fatal finish, and of the 
illness that struck down both Nephele and 
me with such strange simultaneity ? 

There was no one of whom I could in- 
quire. All that I wished to know was too 
secret, too sacred, to be spoken of ; and I 
feared to ask any question, lest I should 
betray anything of that inward life- drama 

of mine, that was to me so much more 
144 


Nephele^ 

real than the little over-rippling waves of 
outward events. 

, All I asked was if Lord St. Denys had 
been to the house lately. 

Not quite lately,” answered the dear 
silver-haired lady, who, with her younger 
sister, had made her house the friendliest 
house of friends to me during so many 

days. “ Not since ” and she stopped, 

with trouble in her eyes. 

“ Not since Miss Delisle died ? ” I asked. 

“ No — not since then,” she answered 
surprised. “ But who told you she was 
dead?” 

“ No one told me — I knew somehow. 
Perhaps I dreamed it,” I went on, anx- 
ious not to make a mystery, or to suggest 
any spiritual communication. 

“Yes,” she continued gently, with tears 
in her kindly eyes. “ Miss Delisle died 
the same night that you began to recover. 
She took brain fever, as you did ; and it 
ran the same course, only she had not the 
strength you had.” 

At this moment the nurse came in, and 
the lady said to her — 

lo 145 


Nephele" 

“ Mr. Gerard knows what we wanted to 
keep from him — about poor Miss Delisle. 
He thinks he must have dreamed it, as he 
says no one told him.” 

“ Ah,” said the nurse, “ it is wonderful 
what the ear will take in sometimes, when 
the mind is all wandering. I have no 
doubt he heard something said, sometime 
when we thought he was unconscious in 
delirium, and it got to the brain somehow 
and stuck there.” 

I said nothing, glad that any explana- 
tion should be found to satisfy them, 
and others, and prevent questions or guess- 
ings. 

“ So, I suppose,” went on my hostess, 
“ there can be no harm now in giving him 
Lord St. Denys’ letter?” 

“ No, I think not,” said the nurse. 

They brought me the letter, deep-edged 
with black ; and as I opened it, I wondered 
in myself if now I was to learn what I so 
much wanted to know. 

It was very short, the cry of a sorely 
wounded heart. “ I cannot come to see 

you ; and if I could, I might not tell you,” 
146 


Nephele^ 

it said. “ They will give you this letter as 
soon as they think you well enough. 
Nephele is dead; and just now I have 
hard work to keep from wishing that I 
were too. I am going abroad with my 
brother. I shall learn to bear it in time. 
And when I come back, I hope to find 
you strong and well, and to talk much to 
you of Nephele^. I think she would have 
sent you a message, but she was only con- 
scious for a few moments together ; and 
you will understand how precious they 
were to me.” 

This was the whole of the letter ; and it 
comforted me not a little ; for I saw from 
it that nothing had come to disturb my 
friend’s peace of mind — to suggest any 
deeper feeling between Nephele" and me. 
She had loved him to the end with the 
same love she had given him at first — a 
strong true woman’s love ; a love that any 
man would have died to win of her ; a love 
which to every man in the world, save one, 
would have seemed the highest and deepest 
of her nature. To this love, and to her 
plighted troth, she had been true, always ; 

H7 


Nephele^ 

nay, to have been otherwise was to her, 
for no stress or strain or struggle possible. 

And as I lay with closed eyes, I thanked 
God for her who had departed this life so 
nobly. I felt no doubt, no misgiving, no 
jealousy. That I had won of her some 
far deeper, far more intimate love — some 
nameless soul-emotion, to which her love 
for her lover bore the same pale kinship as 
sister-love does to wife-love — this I knew. 
And I found no stumbling-block, no dif- 
ficulty. I seemed to have sounded depths 
of spirit-being beyond the ken of man’s 
experience, beyond the plumb-line of the 
metaphysician. If hereafter there were to 
be knowledge, and re-union, and a new 
life, then I felt serenely certain that there 
would be no jarring or antagonism ; that 
loves and friendships, that knit us three in 
ties so impossible on earth, would all be 
simply understood, and have right order 
and place. As my spirit-communion with 
her had been beyond the reach of language 
to phrase, or of thought to syllogize, so the 
relations between us three were beyond the 

possibility of expression in human thought. 

148 


Nephele* 

They were, they are, a reality ; and yet re- 
alized in earthly life, they must have rent 
us all, hearts and souls, in sunder, in end- 
less irremediable torment. 


149 


Nephele^ 


CHAPTER XIII. 

After this my recovery proceeded 
apace, and in a comparatively short time 
the nurse was able to leave me; and I was 
well enough to go to the seaside to pick up 
strength. The two kind sisters, who had 
so tenderly cared for me, insisted on going 
with me. They wanted a change, they 
declared, and were going to take a house 
at Freshwater, where I must come and 
stay with them as their guest. 

It was now April, April at its best, mild 
and soft, with many days of unbroken sun- 
shine. A very few days made a surprising 
difference in my strength, and I was soon 
able to walk on to the beautiful Downs, 
able indeed, as my hostess good-humor- 
edly complained, to walk further than they 
could accompany me. 

But as I thus rose up out of the valley 

of the shadow of Death, and began to face 
150 


Nephele^ 

life again — to feel that mere passive dreamy 
convalescence was not life — that I had to 
live my time here on earth, to use my 
hands, my brain, my nerves — there came 
over me an intolerable weight of misery, 
and I felt as if the prospect were unen- 
durable. Life, with love and the hope of 
love extinct at the beginning — life, with 
its dreams forever broken and spent — how 
could I go out to it? Where could I 
gather the daily measure of hope to re- 
plenish the daily waste of will ? 

I felt as a man shipwrecked in vast 
vacant seas, who with labor and effort 
has won to some floating spar, and climbed 
upon it. Then, looking round for helpful 
sail or friendly shore, he sees nothing but 
the wide and desert ocean. 

For Nephele, and my love of her, had 
so grown into my being, that all I thought 
and planned had reference to her. Even 
when I had resolutely renounced the 
dream of winning her, the world had yet 
held her, living— not for me indeed, and 
yet indeed for me. For the lamp, which 

is one man's treasure, may be a light to 
151 


Nephele^ 

lighten many others. In all I did, or 
thought, or dreamed, she was ever before 
me. In the very agony of my renuncia- 
tion of her, I had pictured her as looking 
on in pitying approval. To be worthy in 
her eyes — worthy in conduct, worthy in 
talent, worthy in every way — this had been 
the mainspring of my life. 

And now . . . 

It was a bright afternoon on the cliffs. 
I had strolled some way, and was sitting 
in brooding solitude near the cliff-edge 
where the cliffs are highest, with darker 
and darker thoughts succeeding one an-r 
other. “What ! ” I cried to myself, sud- 
denly conscious of unaccepted benedic- 
tions in air and sun and sea, of rejected 
loveliness in the shining shadow-pencilled 
cliffs, “ What ! has it come to this, that 
Nature at her loveliest has no power to 
soothe me, or to lend me one moment’s 
touch of the old delight ? Then there is 
indeed nothing to live for ! I will live no 
longer ! ” 

And I rose to walk towards the edge of 

the sheer cliffs : and I verily believe that 
152 


i Nephele^ 

the stress of my despair had for the 
rnoment overborne all the natural dread 
and repulsion of such a death. 

But even as I rose I perceived some 
one approaching, whom the slope of the 
ground had hidden from me, while I was 
reclined on the grass. He drew near and 
paused close to me. I raised my eyes, 
sullenly, angrily, and saw that it was an 
old Roman Catholic priest, whom I had 
noticed once or twice before about the 
place. So courteously he greeted me that 
I vras constrained to return the greeting. 
And heedless of my curt reply, he began 
to talk — stranger-talk, commonplaces of 
the weather and the lovely scene before 
us. I listened, replying only with a 
gloomy yes ” or “ no,” impatient for him 
to be gone while yet the hunger of death 
was fierce within me. 

And then I saw that he was drawing 
something from under his cape— a roll of 
paper. And softly he said — 

“ Are you not Mr. Gerard ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, startled at being known. 

I have been some days trying to find 
153 


Nephele" 

you, alone,” he continued, “ to give you 
this.” 

He unwrapped the roll, and lo ! it was 
the score of the Nephele"' sonata — the score 
which I had forgotten completely, ever 
since it had been left on the music-stand 
in the Concert Hall. I gazed at it in 
wonder. The whole current of my 
thought was turned back. 

“Who are you?” I asked abruptly. 
“ How came this in your hands ? ” 

He replied gently — 

“ I am family confessor to the Delisles. 
I knew Nephele' Delisle all her life.” 

As he was speaking he had quietly 
turned the first page of the music, and 
opened before my eyes the beautiful 
melody which had once been to me as the 
very key of Heaven. 

There is a wonderful instinct of prescient 
sympathy developed in a kindly-hearted 
old Roman Catholic confessor, who has 
spent his life in listening to the faults and 
follies of human beings. Had he guessed 
what were my thoughts when he came up ? 
Had he chosen his words and opened the 
^54 


Nephele' 

music purposely, foreknowing what effect 
they would have upon me ? I hardly 
know. But if he had, his purpose was 
gained. The mere glance at the musical 
score, the mere mention of Nephele's 
name, awoke again in me the memory of 
her, and the old desire to be worthy of 
her. The black fiend of despair was 
routed once and forever ; and tears fell 
from my eyes upon the score as the 
Father laid it gently in my hands. I made 
no attempt to hide them from his kindly 
sight. 

He laid his hand upon my shoulder, 
and said — 

“ Will you sit down again? I have 
much to tell you.” 

We sat down side by side on the warm 
thyme-scented turf, and gently he began 
to speak. 

“ I said that I had known Nephele De- 
lisle all her life, and I confessed her before, 
poor child, she had any sin-stain on her 
white soul, if indeed there were ever aught 
in her that even the best of us would 

dare to call sin. Once, some four or five 
15s 


Nephele^ 

years ago, she came to confession with a 
trouble about her violin-playing, of which 
she was passionately fond. She told me 
that on a certain afternoon, when she took 
her violin to play her exercises, she found 
she could not begin them, but against her 
will, as it seemed, began to play a strange 
and beautiful air of which she knew noth- 
ing before. And that in spite of her efforts 
to leave off, the music took such hold upon 
her that she went on and on for some 
time. And all the time, she said, she was 
conscious of some one being near her — 
some one she did not know, but with whom 
in some mysterious way she seemed to be 
exchanging thoughts and holding converse. 
She was much disturbed in mind, and 
asked me if I thought it could have been 
an evil spirit that spoke to her, though 
the music, she said, seemed too lovely to 
have anything of evil in it. I comforted 
her, and told her it was more likely to be an 
angel than an evil spirit, and that she need 
not be afraid. But privately I advised 
her parents to stop her violin-playing for 
a while, as I thought it had been too much 


Nephele^ 

for her delicate nerves. This they did, 
and she was not allowed to resume it, in 
spite of all her entreaties, for some time. 

“ It was several years after, that she 
came to me again with a rehearsal of ex- 
actly the same experience. She was a 
grown-up young woman now, and by no 
means nervous or hysterical, and I was 
puzzled by the repetition of the phenome- 
non. Still I set it down to purely physical 
causes, and an imagination excited to vivid 
power by the influence of music ; and, as 
before, I told her to think nothing of 
the matter, but to leave off her playing, 
and take a rest for a time. This she 
did. 

“ Then, last summer, came her visit to 
Oxford, of which you know. When she 
returned home she immediately came to 
me, and told me that she had met in Ox- 
ford a great friend of Lord St. Denys, the 
best accompanist she had ever found ; 
and how you had startled her by playing 
the same music she had herself played 
on those two mysterious occasions ; and 
how she had played it with you for a short 

157 


Nephele" 

time, till, finding that, in some way she 
could not explain, she was beginning to 
converse, as she said, with the most open 
intimacy, with a comparative stranger, she 
contrived to snap her string and end the 
music. 

“ I now perceived that there was some- 
thing more in the matter than I had at 
first thought, something quite unexplained 
by ordinary physical laws. I knew of her 
engagement to Lord St. Denys, and gravely 
and fatherly I pressed her with intimate 
questionings, till she had told me, I truly 
believe, all that she knew herself of the 
innocent inmost of her own heart. She 
loved Lord St. Denys with an honest, 
tender, womanly love — loved him deeply, 
and with as much passion as her white 
soul could know. When I found this to 
be so, as indeed I had before thought, I 
felt in great measure relieved for her. I 
felt no fear that, unconsciously to herself, 
she had begun to cherish the seeds of 
another love, or did not love truly him to 
whom she had plighted her troth. But 
I thought, and told her, that the explana- 


Nephele"" 

tion was probably to be found in some- 
thing of the nature of thought-transference 
or hypnotism, that she had been hypnotized 
unconsciously by your music, and had 
been thinking the thoughts you had sug- 
gested. The more I reflected the more 
probable did this explanation of musical 
hypnotism appear to me. 

“ She asked my advice as to playing 
with you in future. She had taken a great 
liking to you, partly as Lord St. Denys’ 
great friend, partly, she said, from your 
sympathetic touch on the piano. She 
foresaw that she would be often brought 
into contact with you, and asked me if I 
thought she would be putting herself un- 
der your influence too much if she played 
with you, as of course it would be natural 
for her to do. 

“The question gave me some perplexity, 
and at last I determined to ask a very dis- 
tinguished and powerful hypnotist, whom 
I knew slightly, what he thought of the 
case. I described the circumstances to 
him fully, only suppressing a few non- 
material points, and mentioning no names 
^59 


Nephele" 

except, necessarily, Miss Delisle’s. He 
did not negative the idea, but said that he 
had never himself, though a musician, 
found any such power in music ; and he 
asked me if he might see Miss Delisle. 
She consented, in her bright, open, almost 
royal way, to see him, and the interview 
took place at my house. But, almost 
without any experiment, the hypnotist 
declared at once that she was not a sub- 
ject for hypnotism. The words he used I 
do not exactly remember, but he plainly 
meant that she was too strong and healthy 
minded ; and he scouted the idea of any 
hypnotist or mesmerizer having any power 
over her. 

“After this decided opinion, I knew 
not what to make of the matter. I found 
out from Miss Delisle that it was only that 
particular music which had had this 
strange effect upon her, and that when 
you had accompanied her in another piece 
she had felt nothing unusual, except that 
you were a very good accompanist. I 
therefore advised her to act naturally, and 
when necessary to play to your accom- 

i6o 


Nephele* 

paniment, but to avoid the former experi- 
ment of improvisation with you. 

“I believe,” he went on, “ she played 
with you repeatedly ? ” 

I nodded assent. 

“Yet she never had any recurrence of 
the former experience till that evening — 
that fateful evening — at the concert ? ” 

I broke in — “ Did they tell you — did you 
know — that I refused at first to play that 
music with her ? I knew only too well 
what its power was. I had vowed a vow 
before the Sacred Elements that I would 
never play this music unless she asked me 
to, and I had kept my vow. God knows 
what it had sometimes cost me, but I had 
kept it.” 

“ Lord St. Denys told me that she had 
asked you to play it,” he said. “ How did 
it so come about ? ” 

I told him briefly of what had happened 
when I found the sonata could not be 
played— of Nephele’s ofler to play it— of 
the failure of the accompanist— of Lord St. 
Denys’ bidding her ask me. 

“ And she did ! ” he said with a sigh. 

1 1 i6i 


Nephele^ 

“ That was like her. So chivalrous — so 
fearless — so full of compassion ! Having 
played so often with you, with no repeti- 
tion of the former feelings, she had lost 
the fear of their recurrence ; and in her 
pity for your disappointment — in her wish 
to do whatever Lord St. Denys bade her 
— she complied with his request, confident, 
I doubt not, that nothing could shake her 
love for him, and possibly, with her 
native daring, anxious to face and over- 
come what she thought was a superstitious 
feeling.” 

We both sat silent for some minutes. 
At last I said : “ Have you anything more 
to tell me of her ? Why did you come to 
find me ?” 

“To bring you the music, and, yes, to see 
you, to know what you were like, and to 
hear your account of this strange story. 
Will you confide in me enough to tell it 
me ? ” 

I did so. I told him all I have written 
—all my feelings and my dreams, and my 
communion with that sweet spirit— down 
to the moment when her spirit and mine 

162 


Nephele" 

parted at the very gates of death— she to 
pass within them, I to be left without. 

“ Ah ! ” he said, “ I was in the house at 
that moment. She was very ill. The 
doctor had said that the crisis was at hand ; 
and they were watching by her, when she 
aroused and asked for her violin. They 
thought her mind was wandering ; but 
she asked again so decidedly, so imperi- 
ously, that it was brought. And I came 
into the room, and heard her play. She 
sat up in bed, propped by pillows, and 
weak as she was, played such a sweet, 
solemn, exquisite cadence that we could 
none of us keep from tears. And then 
she sank back quietly on the pillows — dead. 
Do you know,” he went on, “ that it came 
across me, even at that moment, that her 
spirit was taking its farewell of the other 
human spirit with which it had been so 
strangely connected ! ” 

We sat long, the good old priest and I, 
in intimate talk. He told me of Lord St. 
Denys, and of his most touching last inter- 
view with Nephele, and how he never had 

the least suspicion of any other love in 
163 


Nephele" 

her heart than for him, and went away 
almost broken-hearted. 

“ It is very wonderful,” went on the old 
man, “ no philosophic nor religious theories 
that I know of can explain it. It has been 
well said that there are many creatures at 
home in this one body and soul of ours ; 
and in her, pure as crystal, true as steel, 
there was a love, and another love. Will 
you think me impertinent,” he went on, 
“ if, as an old man — were you of our creed, 
I would say as a priest — I pronounce that 
I see no error, no fault, in all you said or 
did ; rather much self-restraint and self- 
denial, and uprightness of conduct. May 
you have your reward ! ” 

He ended as a priest in benediction ; 
and I felt a soothing comfort in his words. 

Before we parted, he told me how he 
had quietly found out about me, and 
followed me, unknown to any one. 

“ I had your music to give you ; but I 
thought it better no one should know of 
my speaking to you, no one at all.” 

There was no need for him to say more. 
I fully understood what he meant, that 

164 


Nephele" 

these things were sacred to him and to me. 
Who else could understand ? Who else 
would not have misunderstood? Would 
it not have been mere aimless cruelty to 
Lord St. Denys to run the risk of sowing 
the least seed of suspicion in his heart ? 
To me it was, and is, a mystery. What 
would it have been to him ? 

Many months had passed before I saw 
him, and then we had affectionate and 
intimate talk ; nor am I ashamed to say 
that, men as we were, we both wept openly. 

I often saw him till his death last year. 
He never married : there was no need 
for him to marry, he said simply, as his 
younger brother had sons to secure suc- 
cession to the title. 

My life is a quiet one, that of an 
organist in a country town. I have never 
turned out a great composer ; and I have 
never been able to bring myself to publish 
that sonata — Nephele's sonata : it is still in 
MS. Nor do I dare often to play it. The 
memories it brings, though not all pain- 
ful, are too poignant, and unstring me for 
daily life for many days after. Yet now 
165 


Nephele" 

and again, at rare intervals, I do so ; and 
then I draw from its secret place the 
lovely likeness that my own hands drew, 
and dream over again the dream that was 
my truest, highest life. 

Heu! quanto minus est 
Cum reliquis Versari 
Quam 

TUI meminisse ! 


THE END. 


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